


Standby (Chronological Version)

by CiderApples



Category: Fringe
Genre: F/M, post - Jacksonville AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-08
Updated: 2012-07-19
Packaged: 2017-11-06 07:37:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 56
Words: 98,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/416355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiderApples/pseuds/CiderApples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Update to current is in progress...1 chapter + epilogue remain and are almost finished. 5/2/17</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Past: The Rats of (D)ARPA

# Prologue: The Past

There are things Walter Bishop knows, things he doesn't, and things he knows but has forgotten. These states of information are fluid, not fixed. Walter's memory is a parasite that is only _sometimes_ symbiotic.

  

### The Rats of (D)ARPA

It's 1971 when ARPA calls Bell and Bishop out of the lab to investigate a body (if you could call it that: it's a ball of goo with hard parts inside). They dissect the corpse down to slivers of its odd bones, and though they don't inform the overlords, they privately agree that the thing (whatever it _is_ ) is not of this world.

 

1972 brings more bodies, all of them exactly as human as the first one (which is to say, not really), but they're starting to have identifiable legs and arms. There are other discrepancies, too, between the body from '71 and the several that show up by June of this year, and they have to admit that either the organism is evolving, or its build is being upgraded. Walter argues the latter, seeing as how the 'organism' bleeds liquid mercury.

In the fall, an event takes place at a power line junction in Utah. A pylon disappears (along with the power to 4 counties) and is replaced by a ring of upright metal rods, in the center of which lie another body. William Bell takes twenty-four minutes on site to solidify a theory of interdimensional visitation. Walter takes twenty-three to reach the same conclusions, but is distracted by a call from his wife and Belly takes all the credit for saying it first.

Government agents buzz about Klaatu and Pod People as they load the rods into a truck bound for the lab. Bell and Bishop let them steep in the alien ideology without mentioning their theories, because DARPA (not plain old ARPA anymore, having added the D "for the shit of it," according to Walter) won't be able to steer or smother the research they don't see coming.

  

1973 is a pressure cooker. Between Vietnam and oil fiascos, DARPA breathes down their necks about the mercury men problem: a problem, in that they keep appearing, and in that sooner or later some suburbanite is going to find one in their backyard. The War in Southeast Asia is a big enough PR issue without having to spin an ongoing alien invasion into something kinder and gentler.

But by April, Bell is the only one making progress. Walter is bogged down by DoD special requests, last-ditch efforts to save face in Vietnam: nerve regeneration, memory erasers, post-death interrogation; but Bell is a clever diplomat and plays up the alien paranoia to the right bureaucrats, keeping himself assigned to what he calls (privately, between Walter and himself) the Pattern. His approach consists mostly of reverse engineering, which is rough when he's never seen most of the component tech before.

The '72 rods taunt Bell until 1975 rolls around. Walter, finally cut loose from the DoD, returns to the lab from his latest appointment in Arlington and finds his friend sitting at a table, watching a ferrofluid wind its pointy way up one of the mystery rods.

"Walter," Bells says, "I've cracked it."

With the electromagnetic field of the interdimensional beacons spelled out for them, 1976 is fruitful. On New Year's Eve, the two men drink a cooler of Narragansetts and stare through a freshly minted window into another world.

"Go home," Bell says, twenty minutes to midnight. "Tell Elizabeth you're not going to be Gerald Ford's dog. We don't need anyone else anymore."

And Walter _does_ go home. He _does_ tell his wife exactly that, and Elizabeth starts feeling secure enough to consider starting that family they've been talking about.

 

1977 is a year of waiting. Bell works tirelessly to perfect his window. He's building something else, too: a window he'll be able to walk through.

Walter contracts himself out (at a premium, this time) to DARPA, but only to get his hands on the newest wave of mercury men. They look like people, and not just generic people, but _specific_ people. Walter waits to see how they'll evolve. But mostly, Walter waits for his son to arrive.

 

In 1978, Walter sits in the hospital waiting room and chain-smokes his way through Peter's zeroeth birthday. After he sees Peter's red, squashed face for the first time and subsequently gets shooed from the room, he goes looking for Bell with two blue-wrapped cigars in hand. But William Bell is gone.

Instead of Bell, Walter finds the Gateway, glowing and alive. There are notes taped everywhere, in duplicate and triplicate: on the Gateway itself, on the numerous power cables, and on the three backup generators being vented through the basement windows. Every single one was some variation on a warning not to turn _anything_ off.

There's a longer note on Walter's desk, though not much longer. "If I don't make it back," it reads optimistically, "you couldn't have saved me by being here."

  

When Bell comes back, he collapses just over the threshold of the Gateway. Walter drags him into the Electro-Magnetic Field Regulator and it's days before he's back up and at 'em.

"You wouldn't believe what they've got Over There," Bell says when he can speak again. He's brought back notebooks filled with diagrams and a suitcase packed with small electronics. Walter digs through them and doesn't recognize most of the brand names. Some of them, he can't recognize what they're _for._

"You should go," Bell says. But Walter won't go through that Gateway. He has a son, now. He can't take risks.

"Our future is _made_ of risks," Bell tells him.

"Yours, maybe," Walter says.

"No -- everyone's. If you want your son to grow up, you're going to want to start taking all the risks you can." It's cryptic and it's meant to be. Bell is gone again the next day, and Walter notices that a few pieces of lab equipment are gone with him. They don't come back when he does.

"They were the cost of my souvenirs," Bell explains, later. "A payment to balance the universe. An even exchange."

  

Bell appears at the Gateway like a swarm of hornets a day after he leaves on his third trip. "They're clones," he says, as he stumbles into the EMFR and latches the door behind him. As the magnets spin up, he mouths through the glass: "And I think we're at war."

Once he's out, he spreads a sheaf of stolen mimeographs out like pieces of a map on Walter's desk.

"How did you get these?" Walter asks. They must be important, but he doesn't know how.

"I drugged farmer Fitzgibbon's cat," Bell says, making Walter smile.

"I suppose, though," Walter says as he peers over the papers, "that we're more like the rats of DARPA."

"In that we became intelligent, and escaped?"

One of the purplish images shows a man with smoke coming out of his eyes. Despite the gratuitous use of deist symbolism, Walter finds it arresting. There's writing behind the face -- only four letters, repeated, which means there's only one thing it could be -- but the think tanks at Cambridge and Harvard have only just managed to sequence DNA, and Walter can't believe that the Other Side is capably of simply jotting down the recipe for a man.

"This," he says, lifting the sheet from the rest. "What is it?"

"Their future," Bell says, studying over Walter's shoulder. "Or so they believe."

 

### Shapeshifters

"I want to deal," Bell says, after AlterBell shoots him full of a solution that seems to ameliorate his phase-sickness. The exit triangulation of Bell's gateway sits cozily in the AlterLab, but the possibility of an enemy incursion doesn't bother him: there's nothing (yet) that the Other Side needs from his own.

"I don't know how you can be  _me_ and still be unable to accept reality," AlterBell says. "This isn't an issue on which we can compromise. The risk to our universe is too great." He paused. "But you _do_ understand our offer? We can bring you here: you, and Nina, Walter, Elizabeth, Peter..." AlterBell ticks off names on his fingers. "No one who matters to you needs to die."

The offer holds too many unsavory implications for Bell to find it comforting in any way. "All I want is what you know," Bell says. "Information. Maybe we can solve this thing for both sides."

"You don't want to know what I know. Trust me, I'm you."

Bell tries not to narrow his eyes. "I brought you something," he said, opening his fist. "A peace offering. Or a bribe, however you want to take it. It's a prototype."

"Of what?"

William Bell held up a box with a dangling three-pronged extension. "I can make your 'hardware' a little more versatile." It's a calculated move to buy time, to steer AlterBell's attacks in a direction they could see and detect, and he's sure his Alter will see that. But Bell hopes the leap from clones to shapeshifters will be too tempting to pass up.  

It is.

 

The next batch of mercury men shows up in Montauk looking like schoolteachers and bus drivers. Nobody even knows they  _are_ mercury men until they try to infiltrate Brookhaven National Lab on a school trip to the National Weather Service. Under detention they suffer seizures until silvery blood runs out of their ears.

Walter finally takes Bell's dire warnings to heart. He starts to ponder ways of making soldiers.

 

### Cortexiphan

DARPA refuses to host the human trials, officially, but they agree to fund then covertly as long as nothing can be traced back. Walter picks Worcester and Jacksonville: Worcester, because the lab is close; and Jacksonville, because the army is complicit and if Peter comes to visit Walter can take him to Disney World.

 

Bell leaves frequently during the trials to perform reconnaissance on the Other Side. He stays away for longer and longer periods of time. Alone with his data, Walter spends his time poring over records and charts and watching the kids turn into real live monsters. As they get smarter and stronger, Walter sees his subjects differently: less as children, and more as the soldiers he intends to make of them. The smartest ones seem to understand when he talks to them like adults, which makes things much easier and really cuts down on the cookie budget.

Gradually, Walter stops seeing their ages at all.

And then, one day, he's sitting in the basement of Jacksonville Family Daycare Center, surrounded by fundamentally-altered children, and William Bell (fresh off the plane from Harvard, but also fresh out of the Gateway from Over There) looks at him and says, "We're too late."

"What do you mean, too late?" Walter says. "My results are astounding; beyond even what I'd hoped. The soldiers are prepared." It's not what Bell is expecting him to say.

"What do you mean, 'prepared'?"

"You haven't been here," Walter says, "you haven't seen them at work. Their capabilities are-"

"You're talking about the kids?"

"They're not just childrenanymore." Walter's prideful smile is eerie. "The therapy has been extremely effective. They  _are_ our soldiers, Belly."

Bell rubs a hand over his mouth and tries to think of something to say. "Walter," he says. "I don't think you really mean-"

"I'll show you," Walter says, and he does: he shows Bell exactly what he's done, and it's so much more than what they'd agreed upon. Walter hasn't stopped at unlocking the potentialof the brain, he's gone ahead and tried to find out what exactly an unhindered brain could  _do._

There's a boy in a room with twenty rats -- some still alive -- and he sobs desperately in the corner, trying not to touch a single pink tail.

"We can't let him out until he figures out how  _not_ to steal their energy," Walter explains.

Then there's a pair of girls in a room that's mostly reduced to ash. They wear asbestos suits and oxygen masks.

"I wanted them to feel free to experiment. They couldn't do that when they had to worry about burns."

In the next room over, a boy and a girl crouch in the corner of another burned-out room, knees touching, whispering to each other. After a moment, both of them turn to stare through the supposedly one-way mirror.

"Don't let the char fool you," Walter says. "She's not just a run-of-the-mill pyrokinetic. These two are my finest work. They're going to win our war for us, if they aren't turned rogue by Sno Cones and cotton candy."

Walter chuckles to himself and Bell stops the tour there. He pivots away from the observation glass and leans against the cinderblock wall, feeling heavy and too light at the same time.

"I know what you're thinking, Belly," Walter entreats, "but you don't have to worry about liability: trazodone shuts down the dangerous ones when they go home. The others are boarded here long-term; we have plenty of time to fix them up."

"Walter, what..." Bell says. "These are  _children_."

"Not anymore," Walter says again.

 

Bell beats Walter to the daycare the next day. If he hadn't, Walter might have kept all of his memories. But when Walter comes in, there's a little boy in the therapy chair with an IV in his arm and a sensory-dep mask on his face. He's young, about Peter's age. He has Peter's haircut. And he's wearing Peter's favorite shirt.

Walter freezes in place. It can't be Peter. Peter's not in Florida, not in this daycare, not in that chair. He's home in Massachusetts with Elizabeth. But that doesn't stop him from calling Peter's name. The boy's head tilts blindly toward him in response, and in a violent rise of panic Walter turns to William Bell and knocks him out cold.

  

When Bell comes to, Walter's hunched in the therapy chair, not hooked up to anything, just watching him. The boy is gone.

Bell rolls onto his side and pushed himself up to sitting. He stares back at his lab partner, whose hands are clenched into wringing fists beneath his chin.

"Belly," Walter says quietly. "Is it really too late?"

"To grow supersoldiers? Yeah." Bell touches the skin under his left eye. It'll bruise, eventually. "I overheard. Whatever key They needed Over There, they found it, and I don't think we're going to have time for these kids to grow up. I'm not saying we can't win, but this isn't how we're going to do it."

Walter drops his fists to his knees and hangs his head. "Belly...I know that you believe that what I've done with those children is wrong," he says, after a protracted silence. "But I still don't believethat it was."

Bell opens his mouth but Walter is faster to speak.

"I understand what you tried to show me," Walter said. "But I don't regret what I've done, and the fact that I have selfish feelings of attachment to my own son is not a reason to invalidate this experimentation. The costs of safety will always be higher for some. I would like to continue the trials." He looks straight and unapologetically into Bell's aghast expression. "I can tell that this is...unacceptable, by your standards."

"Probably by  _human_  standards," Bell says, looking away. The floor is starting to feel very cold.

"Perhaps I've become less than human, then," Walter says lightly, like he's joking, and when Bell looks up again Walter's flat eyes haven't looked away. "What do you propose for  _that_?”

To Walter’s surprise, Bell has an answer.

 

### Proof

Eight days after Walter horrifies him in Jacksonville, Bells finds out (by accident) what the Other Side's key to victory really is. It shows him the kind of man Walternate is, which proves to him the kind of man Walter could become, without intervention. When Bell comes back, he phones Walter immediately.

"That thing you asked me for," he says. "I'll do it. We can start mapping your brain tomorrow." He grips the receiver much too hard because at first there's only silence on the other end. But the there's Walter's low voice.

"I realize," Walter says, "that I may be unable to continue to work, afterward. I may lack several of my more valuable mental faculties."

"I'm not going to go in there with a scalpel and no plan, Walter."

"I trust that you wouldn't. Regardless. There will be the possibility-"

"No. There won't."

"I may not have time to rehabilitate if something goes wrong."

"Time for what?"

"Time before the war is won, and not by us."

Bell almost laughs. Almost. He's either going to laugh, or cry, or get a heart attack from the stress of keeping what he's learned about the End Times from Walter. "Walter...Their plan, Over There...let's just say it's going to take longer than I thought," he says.

"Why? What's keep them?"

 _Who's_ keeping them, Bell wants to say, but he can't open that door. Walter's response could be catastrophic. "I don't know," he lies. "But I know now that Their master plan is long term. Very long term." As long as it'll take for Walternate's little boy to grow up.

"How can you be sure they aren't deceiving you? It's possible they're attempting to misdirect-"

"I've seen the proof." The proof is small and beautiful, dark-eyed and sweet-cheeked. He doesn't look like the picture of the smoke-eyed man just yet, but his DNA spills letters in exactly the right pattern. It's good, because it gives Bell the time he needs to keep working on a solution, but it's bad because Walter's Peter left a juice box in the lab the other day and Bell tested it and it turns our Walter's Peter is also a match. Bell doesn't know what to do about that. He doesn't want to think about what he might _have_  to do about that, if the end of the world finds him without any other options.

"You should show me," Walter says, "before you cut out my critical reasoning skills."

"I'm not going to cut your critical-- Walter. Look. I promise I'll tell you all about it, but if I  _am_ going to operate, let me tell you afterwards. I don't want to have to go back and figure out what you remember and how you remember it." Bell hopes this is a convincing argument.

"No crossed wires," Walter says. "I see."

"No crossed wires."

Walter had breathes deeply. "All right."

"Tomorrow, then. I'll see you at the lab."

"Indeed."

  

Bell doesn't  _cut_ , so much as he  _confuses_. He pokes and buries and misdirects neurons until he's confident he's burned the maps he came for. He destroys exactly what he told Walter he would, and a little more than that, too: enough that, when Walter wakes up, Bell is able to rewrite a swath of history. It's the first time he destroys a piece of his partner's brain, but it won't be the last.

When Walter recovers, he seems lighter for his ignorance, but Bell can't shake off the weight of the future.

 

 

And then Peter starts dying. 

 

### Peter

Walter begs Bell to bring something back from the Other Side that can save his son, and drops a week's worth of acid in two days when he learns his alternate is begging for the same thing.

Walter tries everything, and everything fails. Peter dies. And Walter is fine with letting the world end, for a while.

But then Bell leaves the Window out by accident, and Walter looks over, and sees his son on a table in Their lab.

  

Walter has never seen, and will never see, William Bell in a such a panic as when he sees the Other Peter in the EMFR, recovering from the trip.

" _Goddamn it_ , Walter," Bell says, furious. “Jesus, just... _why?_ "

"I saved him," Walter says.

"They're going to come for him...for us, too, as soon as they figure out how," Bell says. He rips the power supply out of the Gateway.

"I plan to return him," Walter says, and Bell only gets angrier.

"You can't just  _return_  him," he says. He stares into the EMFR. He has to remind himself this isn't right; that this isn't the same Peter for whom he'd made a remote-control helicopter on his last birthday. It would be so easy to pretend otherwise.

"You can explain," Walter says. “They trust you.”

"No," Bell says. "Peter's too important to Them. No matter what I say, They'll think we did this on purpose."

"Of course I did it on purpose; he's my son," Walter hisses.

"He's Their  _world_ ," Bell counters. "Their salvation. Their only hope for survival."

"Based on what, Belly? A few sheets of paper that They don't even know you know about?"

"Oh, They'll figure it out, now. Why else would we have taken him?" Bell paces. He kicks a garbage can hard enough to bounce it off a wall. Walter puts a protective hand to the wall of the EMFR, but Peter doesn't stir. "What were you  _thinking_."

"I was thinking of Peter," Walter says.

“For Christ's sake, be a scientist!” Bell explodes, and Walter takes personal offense.

“I  _am_  a scientist,” he says, butting Bell against the cool metal of the Gateway, holding him there by the collar. “But I am also a father.”

 _“You knew better,”_  Bell snarls.

“No,” Walter says. “Perhaps there was a time when I knew  _differently,_ but that came from a place of ignorance--”

“Bullshit--”

“-- _and_   _such arrogance_ , that you excised bits of my brain to change me.” He released Bell's collar. “If I had been capable of deciding Peter's fate without compassion, then I would still be that cold, arrogant man, and our efforts would have been in vain. But you helped make me better, and whatever reasons you had for it then, those reasons should stand now, more than ever.”

Bell puts hands through his own hair, pulls hard and mutters, “What are we going to do?” before turning his back on Walter and retreating to a dark corner of the lab.

  

Walter can't move Peter from the EMFR until he stabilizes, which means Peter's still in there when their lab assistant comes in on Monday. 'Surprise' would be an understatement, considering she'd been an onlooker at Peter's funeral.

Carla's angry, Walter can tell, but aside from a brief moral debate, she agrees to stays quiet. She asks to see Walter's notebooks, his carefully kept records, and Walter doesn't see how it could hurt to let her. But early Tuesday morning, he comes in to find 226.17g of blond hair in the sharps disposal, Carla unconscious on the floor, and slow flames licking the frame of the Gateway, its metal skin curling like shaved chocolate.

  

Bell speeds to the lab when he hears. He tiger-circles between the smoking Gateway and his morose, shorn lab assistant while Walter tapes up the bullet graze over her ear.

“So,” Bell interrogates, “not only did you try to cross, but you lit my tech on fire?”

“I didn't want anything to come back,” she says, keeping her head still. “Including myself.”

Bell snorts. “And yet, here you are.”

“Barely,” adds Walter, laying cotton down over her wound.

“I had no idea They'd be waiting there,” Carla says. “It only made sense to turn back when I saw They intended to kill me.”

“Why? Your martyr complex doesn't extend to alternate universes?”

“It's not just about a matter-for-matter exchange. I was supposed to be an ongoing energy offset for Peter, to balance his life here. Dying wouldn't have helped anything.”

“Ugh,” Bell sighs. “Ongoing energy offset? Really? What  _is_ it with you post-docs? You walk into an extremely complex situation and think that your unreasonably simplistic solution is the answer.”

Carla scowls. “Unreasonably simplistic?” she says. “Walter steals someone's child, you condone it, and  _I'm_  the one who's unreasonable? You both know the consequences of what you've done. If we don't balance the scales--”

“Don't lecture me about consequences,” Bell says. “Not after They've trampled string theory with their Shapeshifters for years.”

“At least They've been careful,” she says. “They've only ever sent what They could take back in trade: like I said, matter for matter. You're the one who sent  _life_.”

“It was inevitable,” Bell says.

“Even so;  _you_  went Over There, walked, talked and metabolized, and infused energy into a system without taking any back. The Other You might have paved the way for this, but you're the one who disrupted space-time. And now you've got an entire person -– a potential lifetime of energy -- on the wrong side, and you and Walter are just sitting here cooling your heels when you should be terrified of the result.

“And you're right. Fixing it isn't going to be as 'unreasonably simplistic' as an equal and opposite reaction. The bioenergetic continuums in play are impossible to quantify. Even if my exchange had gone as planned, it wouldn't have stopped the chain reaction you've started; at best it would have slowed it down. But mark my words, the universe _will_ make a trade, and as long as Peter’s still living, it’ll never be precise enough. There'll be more and more trades, and each one will open up a new rift between our universes, and eventually it'll be like you put wool in the dryer. You'll have to theorize about how that kind of superdense time-space looks because you won't survive to see it.”

Walter smooths tape along Carla's temple and pulls his hand away. “I'll take Peter back, regardless of the consequences,” he resolves, "as soon as we get the Gate up again."

“Too late," Bell says. "They've militarized against us. Look at Carla; they're guarding my damn Gateway. Nobody's getting through.”

“I'll make them understand that only I am responsible for this,” Walter says.

“You can't,” Bell says. “Don't you get it? Even once They have Peter back, They can't be sure we don't know Their plan for the future, or that we haven't used him -- or a sample of his blood, or even a single one of his cells -- to develop a counter-offense. Their end times prophecy is winner-takes-all; They have to assume that we stand to wipe them out. They'll come after us until we're gone, and when we are, This Side will be defenseless. Waiting to be obliterated by Their machine.”

As soon as he stops talking, Bell remembers that he's never told Walter that Peter is Their lynchpin. He also remembers  _why_ he's never told Walter: because suddenly, as Walter puts two and two together, his face turns downright Satanic.

"What would one of Peter's cells have to do with it?" he says, voice as soft as the whistle of a dropping bomb.

It takes another surgery to make Walter forget again. This one is involuntary.

 

The first thing Bell does (after fixing Walter for the second time) is ensure that Peter stays put. Now that there's only one of him, Bell realizes it'll only be a matter of time before his Alter-Self figures out how to cross over and steal Peter back. There's only one airtight solution he can think of: in 1986, he places three harmonic beacons around his Monte Carlo. He watches his alternate self through the window, sets the arrival coordinates carefully, and causes a fatal and fully intentional accident.

The second thing Bell does is begin an offensive. Luckily, he'd already stolen the plans for the Other Side's doomsday machine: they'd come along with the rest of the prophecy. He lays the plans out in the lab, tells Walter it's some kind of time machine (and maybe it is, for all Bell can tell), and starts accumulating hardware. As the build progresses, Walter watches Bell enter strings and strings of DNA, base pair by base pair, from his mysterious blueprints into the tech.

  

In 1991, the machine gets finished and there's another fire in the lab. By the end of it, the next 17 years of Walter's life are spoken for.

 


	2. 2008

# 2008

  


### Thanksgiving

The Bishop's first Thanksgiving together after twenty-odd years was in a restaurant: a meal paid for by a desperate Bureau of Homeland Security. Peter wanted to bill them hourly, in addition, for the traumatic awkwardness of sitting across the table (which would have been a nice table, with a tablecloth, if Walter hadn't decided he wanted to have the meal at a 'family dining establishment') from his father.

It wasn't Denny's, but it was close. Theirs was the only booth not crammed with kids. Peter had forgotten _kids_. They were loud and crawling over the booth-backs and under the tables and flinging mashed potatoes and crying about their pile of peas being one pea short. None of it seemed to bother Walter. Someone could have driven a tractor through the salad bar and it wouldn't have bothered Walter.

Peter watched battered shrubs shiver in the parking lot and fantasized about his real life, the business he still refused to call his 'old life.' There were so many places he'd been, and any one of them would have been an upgrade at this point, just by the virtue of not including Walter. Peter craved kebabs and baghali, but not turkey, not at all.

When the food hit the table, he refused to eat. He wouldn't give Walter the satisfaction. He felt bad that the waitress kept asking if everything was all right; she seemed like she actually cared. Probably thought he was a great guy, taking his senile dad out for turkey day. Probably even had a picture in her head of the old-age home he'd checked Walter out of, in all its green-walled glory.

 _Sweetheart,_ he thought, _you have_ no _idea._

He played along, though, because she had nice eyes and she was working on Thanksgiving, and she deserved a bright spot where she could get one. He'd leave her another bright spot in tip form (thanks again, Broyles) for having to clean up all the grease dots on the windows where the kids kept bouncing those fucking peas. He could probably get her phone number out of it, maybe even a more palatable Thanksgiving _night_ , except that he'd have to keep playing the part of the doting son or risk dealing with her fragile disappointment when she saw the kind of man he really was.

Walter knew what kind of man that was, Peter was sure. Peter glared at him as Walter walked his cranberry sauce off a turkey plank. Walter sensed the attention and knew better than to look up. He crammed a rhombus of turkey in his mouth so he wouldn't be tempted to speak, and after a while, Peter shook his head and looked away again.

 

 

When they left the restaurant, Peter wouldn't go back into the hotel room. The idea of that kind of sealed-up, four-hundred-square-foot entrapment was too repellent.

He walked Walter to the door of the building. Took him up the elevator. Escorted him down the hall. All in silence. At their door, he dipped his room key into the reader and when the light blinked green he pushed the door open so hard it hit the stopper on the wall. A dense quiet drifted out. He didn't go inside.

"Go on, Walter," he said, and Walter obeyed. Three feet in, he turned around and hoped that Peter would tell him where he was going, but that didn't happen. "Try your best not to irreparably damage anything." Peter let his hand slide down the face of the door. "Or don't," he said. "See what happens."

The door closed between them, and they were both alone.

 

 

For almost two decades, Walter had been waiting to be alone in a room that wasn't painted gray or green. Now, he couldn't see why. The hotel was too cold. The cheap radiators were beyond control. Peter was gone. For all its chintzy furnishings, the room felt deeply empty, a void, and it was spreading to him.

But, no, that was incorrect: it was he himselfwho contained the void. The emptiness was in him, spreading out, filling every place he went. The things he'd waited for, the things that had kept him waiting, were gone. His wife. His son (who was present, but gone just the same). His memories. His future.

Walter sat on the hard mattress for a long time, until his eyes drifted to a box in the closet and focused there. When he stood, finally, the box is what he went for. He took it down, set it on the bedside table, and wondered how Peter hadn't noticed that he'd brought drugs home from their new lab.

No, incorrect again: Peter _had_ noticed. He just hadn't cared.

The void turned emptier.

Walter removed the lid. There was a syringe. Of the little bottles, he took the one labeled 'Seven Suns (setting).'

The blank pad of hotel stationery was tempting, but he couldn't bear the idea of his final words being put into an evidence bag, being passed around while agents belittled whatever genuine sentiment he managed to put down in ink. So he took only the syringe, the bottle and his favorite sweater with him to the bathroom. He chose the floor instead of the bathtub, in case Peter wanted to shower when he got back. The syringe was a large one, and he filled it completely.

 

 

### Walter Dies

How many seconds would it take to die?

Walter had made the solutions a week ago: forever, in St. Clair's time. He was still on St. Clair's time. He had trouble remembering he didn't live there anymore. He missed the pudding. Sometimes, he missed everything else, and that made him furious but it was true. Things had been easier with someone telling him when, exactly, to live. Much more difficult to face Peter and realize and that the only reason he'd had for getting away from the institution had never stopped trying to get away from _him_.

Walter loved pudding.

Walter loved Peter.

But now there was nothing left.

The sweater he'd brought with him to the bathroom sat in a ball under the sink, and despite his intentions to keep the hotel bathtub free of dead men, he'd ended up there anyway: the floor was cold with nowhere to lean, and the bathwater was so warm.

The tub was beige. Why it wasn't pink or green or claw-footed, with a built-in porthole to view a sunken aquarium, Walter didn't know. He should have designed hotel bathrooms. He should have designed hotels. So many things he would have been good at. Hotel bathrooms shouldn't all look the same; not when they could look homey, with Cartesian-diver bath toys and cracks in the tile from where a man's son pulled the towel rack out of the wall trying to do chin-ups.

Walter could feel his toes against the tub rim, clammy as they were, which meant the poison was proceeding slowly. It hadn't been cyanide in the syringe, then. Perhaps it was an opiate: too much of a good thing, a smooth sail on hallucinogenic seas, right over the edge of the world. Walter hoped he'd felt charitably toward himself when he'd formulated the solution.

How many minutes did he have left? How many seconds? Should he have written a note, after all? Would Peter eat the danishes he'd been saving from the hotel's continental breakfast? Would Peter findthe danishes before they went bad? Was the niche behind the ironing board too good of a hiding place for danishes? So many questions unanswered.

Peter's towel hung on the towel hook. Walter was imagining the photo-negative of his body burned into it like the Shroud of Turin, when someone tried the doorknob.

"Walter?" The voice wasn't Peter's. Metallic taps on the door followed, morse code for meddling. "Open the door." Walter heard an impatient, largely intolerant huff.

_Nina Sharp._

"I'm coming in there," Nina said. "And don't think nudity will scare me off." The metallic tapping became Nina's mechanical fingers tripping the lock, and then she was standing in the door frame, observing the parts of Walter not submerged. "Well," she huffed. "I see you didn't heed what I said about nudity."

"In death, all men are bare," Walter waxed.

"Get out of the tub." Nina proffered a towel that hadn't come from the bathroom. Fifty-fifty it was Walter's bathing towel. Fifty-fifty it was his reading chair cover, replete with ball-sweat. Either way, it was in Nina Sharp's hand. Walter pressed his head stickily toward the condensation track marks on the wall.

"You're too late," he said.

"For what?"

Walter led her eyes to the empty syringe on the floor, the rubber tie-off he'd snapped loose and thrown into the corner.

"Ah. I see." She wedged the towel into the towel rack, which had never experienced the weight of a boy attempting chin-ups. "Well. How long do I have, then? Can you spare five minutes?"

"If I have them, you may violate them as you will," he said, listlessly wiggling his fingers, confused that he still could. It didn't seem right. Nina advanced as if every surface were lightly dusted in flesh-eating bacteria. Gathered her black wrap in her black arm, she was almost able to convince herself to sit on the toilet lid. Almost.

" _Attempt_ to concentrate, Walter." She took a serious breath. "William sent me."

Concentration was a bit much to ask of a man succumbing. But Belly...she'd mentioned Belly. Walter filled his cheeks with air, let them stay like that. Like a hot-air balloon. What was he supposed to be concentrating on? He tried to focus, but things were blurry and his eyes were obstinate.

"You're not...surprised?" Nina had thought William Bell would be a trump card of sorts, but Walter seemed distracted, still.

"Should I be?" he asked.

"I thought you would have presumed him dead," she said.

Walter looked at her incredulously. "Why on earth would I presume that?"

Nina's eyes narrowed. "He never came to your defense," she said. "He didn't visit."

Walter crossed his arms over his soft, white chest. "That would make him spineless and cruel. Not dead."

Nina sighed. "Well, for what it sounds like you care, Walter, William is fine." She wanted some reaction, any reaction. "He's been living in the mirror universe for the past twenty years."

"Almost."

"Almost what?"

"Almost twenty years. Seventeen, actually."

Nina was momentarily lost for words. "I believe," she said, "that William thought you'd be more interested in his being alive in an alternate universe, than in the length of time since your incarceration."

"Well," Walter said, with a slow turn of his head, "he's never been in an institution, then, has he?"

"I understand your time at St. Claire's was...unpleasant."

"I'm certain that is exactly as much as you understand of my experience."

Nina didn't know if she were being excused or insulted. "Walter, the point is this: for twenty -- _almost_ twenty -- years, I have been proxy for William Bell's every action. Mergers, inventions, oversight. I have rarely been privy to an explanation of any sort, until now. Because of you, Walter: because he wants _you_ to know something, and because he can't tell you himself." She took a calming breath. "You should value that. Somehow."

"Should I."

Nina drew herself up like the pale masthead of a ghost ship, and, centering herself in his vision, tried to convey a subtle control over the situation. It was something William had always done better than she. Producing a tablet from a deep pocket, she typed something angrily in.

"Is that him? Are you sending him a message?" Walter asked.

Nina tried to stab him with her eyes. "I'm telling him you're as habitually non-responsive as you ever were. Why he sent me here, at this moment, I cannot even _begin_ to guess."

Walter knew the answer to that one. The first few rounds had been hard, but the questions were getting easier. "I'm dying, Nina."

"You're not dying; you're just drowning in your own wasted potential." She consulted the tablet and sighed deeply. "I have a very important meeting in half an hour, and I _am_ going to leave you here in this filthy bathroom when I go. If that isn't proof enough that you're not dying, you'll just have to wait and see for yourself."

Walter nodded in agreement. It seemed fair.

"Now, I have several things to tell you, and I promised William I would make you understandthem. So pull yourself together for four more minutes, and then I'll leave you to your wallowing." She took a step toward him, leaned down and clasped her hands around his head until the path of least resistance was his eyes on hers. "Your memories are not your own," she said firmly. "William Bell removed pieces of your brain."

"Of course he did," Walter said. He remembered their pact.

"He didn't take just the pieces you remember him taking. You believe there was only one operation, when in truth there were several more. William gave you false memories. He created a narrative for you out of necessity, one you believe to be true."

Bubbles gurgled to the surface of the bathwater. Nina frowned and edged away, taking her hands back with her. Walter whispered to himself about loss of smooth muscle control, but seemed content enough with it.

"Let me tell you the story you think you remember," Nina said. Clearing her throat, she picked at the fingertips of her gloves, as if she were going to remove them. "You remember working with William at the department of defense. You remember weapons projects, a few UFOs, but nothing too strange. You remember that William Bell had a side project, experimenting on children, and that it got out of hand. You remember you had a son, and that he got sick, and that, around that time, you and William became aware of a universe beyond our own."

"The mirror universe."

"You remember Peter's death. You remember that you and William had built a doorway between worlds, and you remember that you stole Peter from the other side, through that door."

"Yes."

"What happened then, Walter?"

"We destroyed it." His foot tapped adamantly against the foot of the tub. A little wave sloshed up around his ankle.

"And then what?"

Pressing a thumb to his lips, Walter went quiet. The reflection of her face in his pupils become clearer as his eyes became wetter. "There was an accident."

"What kind of accident?"

Walter shook his head.

"What kind of accident, Walter," Nina prompted.

Walter's eyes shuttered in a tangle of wrinkles and creases. He couldn't remember. He never could remember: not when the court-appointed psychiatrist had asked him, not when the state-appointed psychiatrist had asked him, and certainly not now.

"Walter. Look at me. The story in your head right now: the accident, the death, your responsibility," Nina said, "is not a true story."

"No." Walter shook his head again. Whatever had happened, whatever the story of his life, he wanted to think that his account of it (incomplete as it was) was more trustworthy than Nina Sharp's. He wished he _could_ think that. He wished she would stop peering down at him with her hard eyes, because he was feeling a little scrutinized, a little trapped.

"Has it ever seemed odd to you that you remember being involved in a deadly accident, but don't remember what that accident was?" she asked. It was a simple enough question, but it made the bees in Walter's head swarm; he accelerated to vehemence at such a pace that Nina rocked back on her heels to avoid the volume of his voice.

"You don't think that in _seventeen years,_ I wouldn't have posed that question to myself a _hundred thousand times?"_ Just as abruptly, he sagged back into the water. "In the beginning I thought my inability to remember was some byproduct of the operation Belly gave me: that my ability to form memories had been damaged. But quite honestly, dear, by the end of my imprisonment, there were few memories of the preceding years I retained with any degree of confidence." He pushed hard against his own knees, kneading against shame and anger. "Electroshock is a beast of a thing."

Nina let him cool.

"There is anotherstory," she said, after a humid pause, "of the past twenty years. The true story. Different from the one you think you know. William authorized me to tell you part of that story today, as a show of good faith."

"Faith?" It didn't sound like Belly he knew. Then again: if Nina were right, what did he know that he knew of Belly?

"Faith that you will do what William needs you to do."

"What does he need me to do?"

"That comes next," Nina said. "First, the truth."

 

 

### The Truth 

"William told me to start with DARPA," she said. "But I disagree. I want to start with Peter." Her hands waved and curled in ornamental patterns, like it was somehow part of the explanation.

 _Peter_ , Walter murmured, playing her echo.

"What I'm going to tell you may seem difficult, given what William chose for you to believe about your past. But you need to accept that everything I say to you now is true." Nina sidled close to the side of the tub, settling like a black dragon on its rim. "When William operated on you, Walter, Peter was something he tried to make you forget: where he came from, how he came to be here. He knew it was likely that some memories would return over time, but he didn't know how many, or which ones, or how long it would take."

Walter looked down at his meager chest hairs waving slowly like flagellates in the water. "But I do remember Peter," he insisted. "I remembered about Peter in St. Clair's, in the middle of a bath. It was a sponge bath. I struck an orderly, several times when he told me what I was saying was impossible. I dislocated his shoulder."

Nina brushed away a drop of water he'd flicked morosely onto her knee. "The machine -- William's Gateway to the Other Side -- wasn't invented for Peter, or even because of Peter. It was invented in 1977, during your investigation of what you called, 'Mercury Men' - William said you'd remember them."

Walter had gone stonefaced, but muttered _yes._

"William developed the Gateway in response to the Mercury Men by reverse engineering Their technology. He used it to cross between worlds, hoping to initiate a technological cooperative between himself and his alternate. What he found, however, was that the Other Side had already advanced beyond most of our technological capabilities. More than that, They believed a prophecy about both universes, one that predicted the end of ours.

"William became privy to this prophecy by accident, during one of his excursions. Initially he dismissed it as a superstition, a near-religious belief, but then he saw the pieces of the machine that They'd begun to excavate. William copied their documents and brought the copies back with him. At the time, we couldn't read them, but the Other Side already had.

"They'd sequenced DNA years before, and they'd seen, in these images, the recipe for a man -- a destroyer of worlds -- and realized that they could create him. Your alternate knew Peter's purpose exactly, from the moment of his conception.

"The shapeshifters were never the primary focus of the Other Side. They were a precaution, a fallback plan. According to their prophecy, it was Peter's life that set the timeline for the war to be won. Thus, it wasn't long after Peter's birththat They ended their collaboration with William. There was nothing more They needed from us. However, William realized that with _your_ Peter on This Side, there was still hope for us. He was confident he could replicate their doomsday machine in the years it would take both Peters to mature. With a machine and a Peter on both sides, William could create a stalemate that could save both worlds.

"And then, your Peter..." A moment of silence was all that was necessary to tell that part of the story. Nina looked down, seeing the reef of Walter's leg through the water and not knowing why his nakedness was somehow less offensive than other people's nakedness.

"I'm sorry," Walter whispered, but not to her. "I've never been sorrier for anything than for taking him."

"It wasn't part of the plan for you to steal Their Peter, but after you had, there was nothing we could have done to fix it. William knew They'd know where Peter had gone. He knew They would militarize against us, guarding our portal of entry. Even if Peter were sent back, alive and well, we could never have regained their trust. And William knew that given enough time, his alternate would be able to engineer a live-human Gateway, just as he had. It might take one year, ten or twenty, but eventually the time would come when the Other Side would show up on our doorstep to take Peter back. Something had to be done to stave off the invasion for as long as possible."

Nina stopped talking long enough to pull an envelope from the lining of her coat. "I brought you something," she said, thumbing it open. "Something William sent to me." A photograph dropped onto her palm, emulsion sticking slightly to her glove.

"Is it a message?" Walter asked.

"No," she said. "It's evidence." She rubbed her thumb almost vacantly over its corner. "Walter, tell me what you know about the alternate William Bell."

"He died. There was a car accident."

"Yes," Nina said. "There was." Her hand extended toward Walter, holding the photo. A tiny silverfish crawled across the surface, and until it had traveled completely to the edge of its flat world and gone around the corner, Walter didn't even look at the picture behind. But then he did, and it seemed familiar enough: a car fused to the base of a statue.

"Recognize this?" Nina prompted him.

Walter almost cracked a smile. "1986. Our finest moment," he said.

"But is this _your_ moment, Walter?"

Walter took the photo from her hands. Nina didn't even give him a hard time about his wet fingers.

"Linnaeus," Walter said, because the statue in the picture should've been John Harvard, not Linnaeus. It was the same statue Walter walked past every afternoon, in its same place, on the same base, with the same buildings behind. Just...wrong.

"Now, Walter, whose car is that?"

He looked from the photograph to Nina, bewildered. Confused. "This is the Other Side," he said. His vision narrowed, sharpened, and he noticed police tape around the scene. An ambulance. A stretcher wrapped in white. "This isn't-" he started, and he tried to hand the photograph back. Nina refused to take it.

"Why did you think you didn't use an empty lot somewhere?" she asked. "Why was William so keen send a car to another world in the middle of a crowded university campus? And why, when you had already successfully taken Peter from one universe to another, would you need to prove that you could send a car?"

Walter was suddenly too tired to explain that it had only been a prank.

"Once his alternate was dead," Nina said, "William believed that the universes would be secure, for a while. There would be no William Bell on the Other Side building Gateways between worlds. With the only remaining Peter on Our Side, the Other Side's endgame was effectively destroyed. However, the doomsday prophecy itself remained.

"By the time of the so-called 'car accident,' William had come to understand two things about multiverses: first, that borrowed energy created links between worlds, and second, that these links were unstable, and would eventually expand to compress linked universes into one. He surmised that as long as energy from one universe existed in another, the ripple of consequences would result in the super-dense convergence of spacetime in which no three-dimensional being could survive.

"There was no fix for the energy exchange that had occurred when Peter was stolen - one can't, after all, fight entropy and win - so William turned to a different solution: he would erase the initial events from the timeline altogether. He adapted one of your pet efforts, the Diz-Ray, into a time dilator and geodesic relocator."

"A time machine? Impossible," Walter said. The very idea was relaxing in its preposterousness, enough to make him yawn. It irked Nina.

"Well, he did it, Walter," she said. "Believe it."

"It's not impossible that he could have invented a time machine," Walter said. "But if he had, he certainly would have told me. Most likely, I wouldn't have heard the end of it; he would have been insufferable. We had a thousand dollars and naming rights riding on who would be the first."

"To invent a time machine."

"Obviously." He scratched his nose. "The Bellevator," he scoffed, under his breath. "Would you use a time machine called the Bellevator?"

"Well." Nina halted mid-breath, annoyed. "In any event, there was a time machine. And immediately after William invented it, he was  _visited_."

 

 

 

> ### 1991: Visitations
> 
> It wasn't five minutes from the time Bell completed the last piece of the Bellevator until the men showed up. At first, Bell took them for government agents, what with their black suits and unnecessary decorum, but they were too soft-spoken. Too pale. Too bald. He watched them approach his machine and didn't think to question why they'd come, where they'd come from, how they'd managed to bypass his security measures or why he, himself, wasn't trying to get them to leave.
> 
> "It's a time machine," Bell said stupidly, waving his hand toward the disassembled apparatus. It was like the words were being pulled right out of his mouth. "Still testing. Limited resources; that's the trouble with institutional research." He didn't know why he was telling this or anything at all to trespassing strangers, but that became a moot point when Bell realized they were reading his mind, mouthing his words along with him.
> 
> "There will be...trouble," said the one that talked, as Bell mutely assessed the situation. "This cannot be." Bell briefly and feebly attempted to explain that it already _was_ , but was interrupted. "We know about the boy," the man said. His monotone was soothing. "We know of your plans." The man advanced on his machine. "We will scatter the pieces," he said, eying the others significantly while curling a stark white hand over a bolt. Then he fixed Bell with strange eyes. "There are things you must do. Then you will come with us."
> 
> There was no conversation about _why_. In fact, after a short while, there was no conversation about anything, just an intermittent supply of information to William Bell's brain. Even after the men left him, it continued, like an automatic typewriter spewing out line after line in his mind. It didn't seem so bad, especially compared to the side effects of some of the drugs he'd tried recreationally with Walter, but he wished the directives didn't come in Their eerily flat voices.
> 
> _The information must be extracted._
> 
> _The portals must be destroyed._
> 
> _There must be an explanation._
> 
> _Tell no one._
> 
> Eventually, it came to pass that the men-in-black's list of chores was completed, satisfied with lab fires, bits of brains, one strategically placed corpse and Bell's final disappearance. As Bell carried out his orders, he received the explanation he wanted from the bald men -- as thanks, perhaps, for his cooperation, although it didn't seem like his cooperation was in any way optional. And, as asked, no one but Bell knew that explanation, nor the real reasons for his actions. Not for a long time.

 

 

### Walter Lives

"To reveal to you all that William now knows would change the course of the future, Walter," Nina said. "And the continued existence of our world depends on our course remaining unchanged. There are things William still cannot tell me, as there are things I still cannot tell you, as there will be things I must order you not to share with Peter or Olivia until the appropriate time."

Walter listened, if only because Nina was making frighteningly intense eye contact.

"I will tell you when and how much and to whom you may release information, but you must understand that this is for our survival and the survival of worlds beyond ours."

Walter nodded, but he felt left out. Apparently, the universe had exploded and the juicy parts had happened without him. And not just without him, but _deliberately_ without him. Had St. Clair's been Bell's intention all along? Had everyone agreed that the universe would fare better if Walter Bishop were kept in a cage, far from the action, completely ignorant for more than a decade? Even _Nina_ was more in-the-know than he was. Belly had left him behind.

"Walter?" Nina queried. From the direction Walter's expression was heading, Nina was afraid he would cry. She had no idea what to do with the man if he did. "You _are_ important, Walter," she said, putting a hand on his arm. "And there are reasons, I can attest, for everything that's happened to you. You are the key to the events that need to unfold in this universe. And William needs something from you, right now."

Walter couldn't imagine what that could be. What could William need that the Other Side didn't have? Houseplants? Red Vines? Birkenstocks? For second he imagined that this was all a trick, that the next thing Nina would say was _go back to St. Clair's and wait for instructions;_ that he was truly, classically insane and that she was playing into his delusions to get him back in a cell.

"You have to keep working," Nina said. "And you have to keep Peter."

 _Keep Peter?_ It was not the task Walter had imagined. Of all the tasks William could have assigned, this one was perhaps the most impossible. "Keep him where?" Walter asked.

"Here. At the lab. With you."

Walter cringed into his palms. "I can't do that."

"Yes, you can."

"He hates me."

"He doesn't hate you. _Per se_."

"He does; I know he does, Nina."

"You have to trust me,” she said. “Trust...Belly."

"It sounds wrong when you call him that," Walter said. Nina rolled her eyes.

"Trust him, Walter." She crouched again on the floor beside the bathtub. "Just for now." She swept a quick hand over his Eraserhead hair, thinking of the way he must have pulled at it to make it puff up that way. Walter hadn't always been a worrier, but since Peter had been born (and died, and stolen back) he'd barely resembled the man he'd used to be. "Walter," she said. He looked up, all watery eyes and sorrowful wrinkles, and she nearly was moved to hug him. Nearly. "The future depends on you," she said. "William is depending on you."

"I wish he wouldn't."

" _I'm_ depending on you. Peter, Olivia, all of us. We need you."

Walter bit his lip. No one had needed him for any reason in quite a while. "I miss him," he said finally, his mouth careting over his chin. "I miss Belly."

"So do I." Uncomfortable as she anticipated it might be, Nina dutifully put her hand out to take his. The feeling of his raisiny fingers on her skin was like scraping a plastic spoon over styrofoam. Occasional drips from the faucet were the only marks of time for several minutes.

"I do enjoy being back in the lab," Walter offered, finally.

"That's good, Walter," Nina said. "That's good." She took her hand back and shook off any lingering emotion, satisfied that she'd proffered sufficient comfort. From the bottomless compartment inside her coat another envelope appeared, large enough to contain the set of papers that she presented to Walter. "William sent these as well. He imagined there might be trouble with Peter in the future. Possibly even with Olivia, someday. They may require evidence of their own necessity. You'll understand, when it comes to pass."

Walter withdrew the papers and turned them around, trying to orient them in a way that made sense. It was Peter, with smoke pouring from his face. And Olivia, her eyes closed, as serene as could be. The images seemed familiar, but not. Had he seen them before? Was that possible? "Evidence of what?" he asked.

"Their destiny," Nina said. "The most relevant parts, anyway." She waited. "Can I count on you, Walter?" she asked, and she watched him until he nodded. "All right, then." She stood to go, and Walter's melancholic stare was heavy on her back.

"Nina," he said, doleful.

"Yes, Walter."

"I never told you I was sorry about your arm."

"No, you didn't," she sighed.

"I'm sorry about your arm."

She sighed again. "So am I." They fell silent, and Nina decided it was past time for her departure. Reticent to leave an old man in a bathtub, she took a fresh towel down from the rack above the toilet and left it on the closed lid within reach of his soggy hands.

"Will I see Belly again?" he asked.

"I'm here because _I_ want to see him again," she said. "So. I hope so."

"I'll do it," Walter said. He sat forward in the tub. "I'll do it." Rivulets of water down his knees distracted him, and by the time he remembered he was dying, Nina had slipped out the door.

 

 

Peter banged in an hour later, inebriated or something like it.

Walter awoke in the bathtub to the racket, knowing he shouldn't be breathing but unable to remember why.

Heavy shoes carried Peter to the closed bathroom door, where he stopped. "Walter," he growled. "I know what you're doing in there." It seemed like an absurd thing for a son to say to his father. "Whichever one you picked," he said, "I replaced them all with saline."

Walter looked at his precious box of vials on the floor where he'd left it. With his child on the other side of the door, he was appalled by the syringe next to the tub, by the rubber tie in the corner, by the thing he'd tried and failed to do. He was appalled that Peter knew. That Peter had anticipated him. That Peter had saved him.

"I might not like you," Peter said, "but I don't want you dead, either." His voice was muffled like he'd put his forehead to the door, and there was a pause like he wanted to say something else, but then the same heavy shoes carried him away in quiet hotel-carpet stomps.

Hearing Peter say it aloud (the not-liking-him part, not the not-wanting-him-dead part) hurt Walter less than he thought it might have. It wasn't so bad. And after sitting alone for a few more minutes, hearing what may or may not have been Peter brushing his teeth and/or peeing in the kitchenette sink, it occurred to Walter that, maybe, it was evidence of something else: _I might not like you, but I can't not love you._

In his gone-cold bath, Walter looked at his prune fingers and didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

 


	3. September: Packing

# SEPTEMBER

 

### Packing

Olivia couldn't find her brown socks.

She'd done four loads of laundry trying to find them. Go figure they'd be AWOL at the last minute, along with her favorite belt. The lone-sock basket in her closet had offered no solutions except to suck her into a sock-matching vortex for an hour, after which she had more pairs of socks but also eyestrain from trying to tell navy from black from brown under her shitty closet light.

She should have known better than to pack up her worldly belongings at two in the morning.

 

 

Peter showed up at her apartment, uncalled for, around three.

"I saw your lights on," he said.

"Because you just happened to be passing by?" she asked. He squinted. It didn't really matter that he was lying. What mattered was that she was going to let him in. "It's three in the morning, Peter," was her last stand.

"Yeah, and? When else were you going to pack?"

She waited impassively, but he just stood there with such unbelievable nonchalance about being at her front door that she let him follow her inside.

 

 

He went through her apartment like a burglar, sweeping the rooms and taking stock. Her bags - she only had two - were in the hall. Stacks of clothing were separated neatly on her bed like first-round draft picks, but her dresser was still wide open for trades.

He glanced into her top drawer, compelled, and saw nothing left but the world's fanciest lingerie (one pair red, one pair blue) and a ball of t-shirts two washes from disintegration. Though he tried not to, he couldn't help but invent significance in the leaving-behind of the fancy and the falling-apart: her intentions were solely to be functional. To get the job done.

"No dancing shoes?" he asked.

"I'm not going on vacation," she said.

He got the point. Soldiers didn't need lingerie.

 

 

Watching her meticulously roll each article of clothing before stuffing it into the chasm of her bags, Peter noticed she hadn't packed for spring. Not that he'd expected her to: it wasn't like she'd be so far away that she couldn't switch out her clothing when the weather turned. Then again, maybe she expected to be gone by winter's end.

She stared into the depths in silence, then grabbed her alarm clock from her bedside table, pulling the plug.

"You don't need that," Peter said. "Walter must have ten of them. He's hooked on clocks, lately." But Olivia wound up the cord defiantly and put it in her bag. Peter sighed. "Suit yourself," he said. He could feel that she was on the edge of irritation with him, so he wandered out of her bedroom.

 

 

The kitchen was empty, desolate, and he wondered if this was how it usually looked, or if she'd packed things away. He thought he remembered her having a toaster, at least. Opening her cabinets yielded nothing but neatly stacked dishes, mugs and boxed foods. Boring. Despite his best intentions to keep out of Olivia's way, he found himself heading back down the hall minutes later, bored with not interacting with her.

He almost passed the bathroom before he caught her reflection in the tilted mirror over the sink. She was paused, holding something in her hand. When she noticed him standing there, he pretended not to know what birth control looked like, and she pretended to believe him.

"Anything I can pack for you?" he asked, his eyes sticking everywhere but on the thing in her hand. He was suddenly intensely curious to know if she was planning on packing it. What it might mean, if she did. It wasn't like she would bring someone home to a house that wasn't actually hers. Though, looking around her place, it didn't look like she brought anyone home to the apartment that _was_ hers.

Olivia also tried not to look at the thing in her hand, but failed. She stared at it without meaning to while she thought of a reason to make him go away. "There's lavender tea in the cabinet next to the stove."

"Lavender tea," he said, removing himself from the doorway. "Got it."

 

 

The last thing Olivia packed was a book. She tried to sneak it in while Peter was examining the rest of the titles on her shelves, but nothing made it past him.

"Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation," he read, picking it out of her bag before she could close the zipper over the cover. "Dana Scully - Senior Thesis. _The_ Dana Scully?" He flipped through a few pages before Olivia took it out of his hands.

"I find it...relevant to our work," she said.

"Don't tell me," he said, something mocking in his tone, "Agent Scully was your inspiration for joining the FBI." He meant it as a joke, as if to say she couldn't possibly be one of the hundreds of college grads who'd comprised the spike in female recruits in the years following the release of the unauthorized, ghost-written account of Scully's years in the X-Files division. But Olivia looked quietly at the plain thesis cover and cocked her head in a way that suggested to Peter that he not say anything else about it.

"She wasn't," she said.

"Just didn't think quantum physics was your _area_ , that's all," he said. He watched her tuck the book back into her bag.

"It isn't."

 

 

"I'd offer you a ride over right now, since you're all packed up, but I don't think you'd take it," Peter said. He was halfway out her front door already, but he was having trouble taking that last step.

"You know me so well," she said, with all appropriate sarcasm.

"So." He rocked on his heels, illogically impatient for his own exit. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"I'm not backing out, if that's what you're asking."

"That _is_ what I'm asking," he said, awkward, nodding with his eyes closed. "And...great. That's great. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow."

Olivia watched him. He was _nervous_. " _You_ still up for this?" she asked.

"Me?" he started. He reached out like he meant to touch her shoulder, but gestured ineffectually toward her instead. "I'm up for anything."

"Okay, then."

"Okay."

"See you tomorrow," she said, edging him out the door with the force field of her proximity. "And tell Walter he'd better clear out some drawers for me."

"Done and done." He was all the way outside apartment now, just his fingers resting in the hinge of the door to keep her from closing it.

"Peter."

"What."

"Go home."

He grinned. "Just think," he said as he backed away down the hall, "after tomorrow, you can say that all you want and it won't get rid of me."

 


	4. September: Rearranging

### Rearranging

Olivia was tired but her eyes were open. She couldn't get them to stay shut. Which was fine. Expected, even. She hadn't anticipated getting a useful amount of sleep -- not on her first night at the Bishop's, and probably not for the next few.

Her laptop sat silent and dark on her dresser, reminding her that even inanimate objects got more sleep than she did. Reminding her, also, that she _could_ just do what she was used to doing: wake it up and sit with it until the sun came up. But the bedroom -- the one that would have been Walter's, if he hadn't preferred the pull-out in the living room -- wasn't that kind of bedroom. It wasn't the kind of room for waking up intermittently from blank, empty dreams. It was a homey room for homey people, with cheery wooden trim and mismatched furniture that promised to be sturdy for decades, during which the world would not end and nothing really bad would happen. 

She did not belong.  


Nevertheless, instead of getting up, Olivia looked over the old windows with their real glass and thought how she never saw real glass in windows anymore. The warps distorted her view of the sky: halves of the moon not quite aligned from pane to pane. The ceiling had three cracks. She watched them like they might change, but they didn't. They looked like an arrow, pointing across the plaster to the wall that kept her in one room and Peter in another. She was overtired enough to wonder if it were some sort of sign.  


She rolled onto her back, resentful of Walter for being asleep downstairs, preventing her from pacing the house or watching infomercials, confining her to a little bed that may as well have been a prison cot for all the sleep she could get in it. And toward Peter, for having convinced her to come live in the house and for not having the decency to stay up and entertain her. She wanted to drop something, something heavy, to make a sound loud enough that at least one of them would wake up. At the risk of that one being Walter, she chose not to.  


Her brain drifted into a holding pattern, thinking nothing, and when it refocused she had the idea that the room was arranged all wrong, and that it was this disarray that was preventing her from rest. It took an hour of stewing for that idea to become an imperative, and only five minutes more to convince herself that the Bishops deserved the noise of scraping furniture: that being awake with her was part of the debt they owed for having her there.   


The dresser went first. She considered taking the drawers out, but patience wasn't part of the plan: she was a big, strong FBI agent, and she was going to rearrange furniture with the drawers in if she wanted to. She tried pulling but ended up pushing, and the scraping wasn't nearly as loud as she'd thought it'd be.  


But then, Peter was standing in her doorway, so maybe it _had_ been a little louder than that. He wasn't squinting because she hadn't turned any lights on, but she saw his messy hair and sleepwalker's posture and smiled ferociously at him, trying to look apologetic when she wasn't. He quirked an eyebrow at her.  


"I couldn't sleep," she said.  


"Yeah, really?" he returned, double-dipping the sarcasm. He folded his arms and leaned against the wall, surveying the scene. She was having trouble getting the dresser around the bed because she hadn't moved the desk first. He saw the solution immediately but didn't say anything, just watched as she put her back into it again and got a few feet further. When she stopped again, breathing hard, she saw he hadn't moved.  


"What?" she demanded, daring him to give any one of the responses that came immediately to her mind: _it's too late for this; you'll wake Walter; you woke me._ He didn't take her up on it.  


"Does this really need to be done right now?" he asked. His tone was pitch-perfect Peter, smart-mouthy and slightly condescending. Olivia put her hands on her hips, ready to fight.  


"Yes."  


There was a moment wherein she waited for him to start the argument, a moment of ramping up the energy she would need to keep up with him once he started talking. But he nodded, instead, and uncrossed his arms, rubbing his hands together like someone had put dessert in front of him.  


"Okay," he said simply. "Let's get the desk out of the way." He had her files moved to the bed and his hands on the legs of the desk before she really understood that he intended to help her. 

"You gonna help me out, here?" he prompted, crouched under her desk, and she grabbed the opposite legs without thinking about it, still switching gears in her mind. "On three," he said, and he gave the count and lifted on three but she was still waiting for the ' _lift!'_ that never came. She laughed at him struggling with his half of the desk in the air and he rolled his eyes and told her they should just get her a bedroll and campstove because she really has no business with furniture. There was something playful in the way he said it, and as she came out of her overtired aggression she couldn't believe how much better she already felt about the room.

 

 

They got it right on the second try and the rest went smoothly. Even the bed, which ended up directly under the windows at the center of the room, was easy lifting with two pairs of hands. Walter appeared only once, groggily shuffling in and asking about the earthquake. Peter said something with a lot of numbers and coordinates and the number 9.8, and Olivia looked at him punishingly but he shrugged as Walter wandered back downstairs.

"Hey, he's not even gonna remember that in the morning," Peter said, "and I figure if I have to live with him, I get to have fun with him."  


 

 

At the end of it all, Olivia was left standing on the rug, dusting her hands on her pajama pants, and Peter was back in her doorway, regarding her sleepily. She looked at him and his face caught her up in a distant, match-strike memory of John's face, looking exactly the same way.  


"You gonna be okay, now? Any more heavy lifting you need done?"  


"I can wait for tomorrow to knock out the windows," she said. "I think they ought to be about three inches to the right."  


"But then you'd have to move the bed again."  


"Ah," she sighed. "That's true. Maybe not, then."  


"Maybe not," he smiled.  


"Peter," she said. She was playing with the drawstring on those pajama pants.  


"What?"  


What she wanted to ask was if he was okay with her being there, living in his house, sleeping next to where he sleeps. If he thought the whole plan was still a good idea. If he thought it would work, at all. But she couldn't bring herself to ask that. "I'm not sure this is a good idea," is what she said instead. He paused before answering, like he knew the questions she hadn't asked.  


"How do you mean?" he asked.  


And again she wanted to say things that she couldn't: that some nights she had no faith in herself, that everything seemed more impossible the longer she thought about it, that she was _afraid_ more and more often and that she was starting to dread the feeling of responsibility. "I don't belong here," she said. "This is your little...family unit."  


Peter grinned. "Sweetheart, I warned you when you got him out of St. Claire's: be careful what you wish for. He's at least half _your_ family unit, now." Olivia shook her head and managed a half-smile.  


"Peter..." she started. Peter stepped back into the dark of the room. It didn't seem odd to either of them that the lights had stayed off. The moon was bright. He approached her, wanted to touch her somewhere, but didn't.  


"Give it time," he said quietly, with a confidence that was entirely for her benefit. "Let's just see what happens. I know it's not your idea of a good time, and I know we're not the Huxtables, here, but-"  


"I just don't think I can do this," she said. It was under her breath, but he was close enough to hear. He _did_ touch her now, just a few fingertips to her arm. It was dark and intimate, _so_ intimate, but they were in spacesuits of denial.  


"I know I've told you this one before," Peter whispered, "but I've never seen anyone who can do what you do." It was a callback, he knew - and she knew it, too - to a moment that had passed roughly between them: a last-minute confession that may or may not have saved a building. They both knew where the moment had gone after that, but tonight, Peter could pretend that the rest of it had never existed. Just the affirmation. Just the encouragement. 

Olivia was good at pretending, too: she nodded and circled back toward her bed where she sat, her toes just barely touching the rug and her shoulders held anxiously high. "Thanks," she said lightly. Her way of saying that he'd said enough. He looked resignedly at the floor, at that rug.  


"Yeah, okay," he sighed.  


"Goodnight, Peter." She was eyeing her laptop, and he knew she wasn't going to go to bed when he left.  


"Hey," he said sternly. "Give it time, alright?"  


She eyed him.  


"Sure," she said, and he knew that was the best he was going to get.  


He closed her door behind him on the way out, leaving her there in the dark.


	5. September: Brown Betty

### Brown Betty

Olivia preferred her bed to her desk: she liked to spread her files and photographs around her like there'd been an explosion. She was organizing photographs chronologically when Peter knocked at the bedroom door. It was a quiet, calculated thing: the opposite of Walter's urgent pounding. She'd only lived with the two of them a few days, but she'd figured that out on the first.

"'Livia?" Peter called in.

Olivia wasn't ready to go out there. There were Bishops _everywhere_ _._

"Dinner's ready," Peter said, and from the way his voice reverberated into the wood, she guessed he had his head pressed to the door, listening for her.

"Okay, thanks," she said, and then she waited. Shuffled a few papers for his benefit.

"He's going to keep making you dinner until you come out and eat it, you know."

She stayed quiet, hoping he'd quietly go, but all she got for her trouble was his muted voice singing: "This is the song that never ends, yes it goes on and on my friends." He stopped to draw a breath. "Some people, _started singin' it_ not knowing what it was, and _they'll_ continue _singing_ it forever just because this is the-"

She opened the door, glowering inches from his face. "Peter."

"Dinner?"

"No."

Peter precautionarily stuck his foot between the door and its frame. "Walter made fun-food."

"Fun-food?"

"Oh yeah."

She crossed her arms. "And I'm supposed to know what that is?"

"Oh no," he said. "Nobody knows. I don't even think _he_ knows; that's half the fun."

"What's the other half? Listeria?"

"Very funny," he said. "I'll have you know that Walter, despite being an N-U-T-S on the Meyer-Briggs, is an appallingly good cook."

"Appallingly, huh?"

"Appallingly."

She folded her hands in her lap. "I just have some notes to type up, and this case..." She trailed off in a way that let him know quite clearly that she would rather do anything - _anything_ \- than go downstairs for some family-style dining with Walter Bishop.

"You can only prolong the inevitable. He wants to make you dinner, and he's _going_ to make you dinner. He'll wait you out, believe me."

"I think I can give him a run for his money," she said dryly. She put her head down, her hands going back to the laptop keyboard. They just hovered there, not typing, and Peter took this to mean that she was still wavering.

"Are you planning to eat _anything_ tonight?"

"Not hungry," she said.

"This, from the woman who orders two dinners when we get takeout?" He sauntered in and felt free to lean on her desk. She tilted her head up at him, pulling her hair together over her shoulder.

"Lo mein is not a dinner," she said.

"A quart of lo mein is _definitely_ a dinner. What was the mu-shu pork, dessert?"

"The tastes go together," she protested.

"Look," he said, "you don't have to eat. But you might _want_ to. And yeah, it's Walter, I know, but stranger things have happened than finding out he can cook. At least, sometimes." Olivia tapped her fingers on the laptop, like she was waiting for him to make more of a case than he had. "I'm not going to sell you any harder, Dunham," he said, his hands in the air. "If you miss fun-food night, it's on _you_."

She licked her lips. She _was_ hungry, and it wasn't right for Peter to just go and mention lo mein and mu-shu like that.

"So what, exactly, is fun-food?" she demanded. Peter smiled wider and went for the door.

"I told you," he said. "Finding out's half the fun."

 

  
The Bishops were already at the table, casseroles in front of them, by the time Olivia wandered down the stairs. They did her the service of not acknowledging her presence until she was pulling out a chair, like she were an animal they didn't want to frighten away.

She slid into her seat quietly; there was a plate set for her. She glanced sidelong at Walter, who was trying hard not to speak as Peter kept a restraining hand on his arm. As soon as she was settled, Peter's hand lifted and Walter cried,

"Agent Dunham! I've made you quite a surprise!"

"So I've heard," she said. She made no motion for a serving spoon, but Walter was already swooping down over the first dish with a spatula and foisting what looked like a heavily spice-rubbed rock onto her plate.

"This," he said, "is one of Peter's old favorites. He even gave it a name, didn't you, Peter?"

"Steak Vesuvius," Peter said graciously. "And I was seven, all right, so let's not judge the name." Olivia was somewhat comforted to see that the piece of _whatever_ on Peter's plate was even larger than her own. "I can tell you that this one is delicious," he said. "Walter tried something once called 'Primordial Soup': cream soup with lemon wedges. You know what happens to a layer of straight-up cream when you squeeze lemon juice into it?"

"It was a representation of the first amino acids synthesizing from the atmosphere of primordial Earth," Walter huffed.

"And I'm sure the board members appreciated that."

"Board members?" Olivia cut in.

"Long story," Peter said. "Point is, I'd tell you if you were about to put a forkful of disaster into your mouth, and you're not." Olivia still looked skeptical, even as Walter passed her a gravy boat filled with red liquid. She took it, but she didn't pour it, trying to negotiate a line between revulsion and politeness.

"Lamb's blood?" she suggested to the table, hoping that someone would tell her otherwise.

"Hot lava!" Walter whispered, making jazz hands on either side of his face.

"Right." She remained unconvinced.

"It's not going to eat itself," Peter said impatiently. "If you don't want it, pass it this way." She passed it. He poured it. The rock on his plate bubbled and fizzed, and it did look strangely like a lava slide. He looked convincingly at her. "Right?" he said. " _Right?_ " There was a giddiness about his face that down-shifted her skepticism into neutral. She watched him cut it, watched the inside appeared as a perfectly medium-rare steak. He gave her a pointed look as he forked up a fat bite. "Somehow, the 'I told you so' makes it taste even _better,"_ he said.

Olivia grabbed the sauce back.

 

  
There followed ramekins of creme brulee that turned a vivid magenta when Walter torched them, and crabcakes that exploded (though from Walter's reaction, that was not the intended effect), and by the end of it Olivia was feeling pretty good. Really, _really_ pretty good. Good enough to start the dishes before Walter might say something to remind her that she was still living in a house with a him for the foreseeable future.

She was in the kitchen, dumping bowls of half-used ingredients into the trash and saving the salvageable, when she came across the bowl.

"Walter? What do you want me to do with...whatever this is?" she asked, holding it up so he could see.

"Oh! That's the secret ingredient," he crowed. Olivia was smelling something familiar coming off the bowl. It looked like old, congealed salad dressing. Except green.

"Walter...is this-"

"Are you going to say THC butter? That would make you correct," Walter said. He was smushing his fingertips along the circumference of his wine glass, leaving little waxy prints behind like a chain of greasy pearls. Peter sat up straight in his chair and stopped pushing rainbow peas around his plate with a fork.

"Oh, God," he said. " _Really_?"

"Just enjoy it, son," Walter scoffed without turning his head from his glass. "It's certainly the safest drug either of you have taken in a long time."

"Walter, I have _work_ to do," Olivia said unhappily from the kitchen.

"Not tonight, you don't," Peter said, and he was out of his chair, dancing up behind her and dipping up a finger of green butter from the bowl she was still resentfully clutching. "Molarity of the butter, Walter?" he called, his finger waving in the air.

"Empirically? Uncertain." Walter smiled at his fingerprint pattern, satisfied by something. "Experimentally? Optimal." A slow grin spread over his face.

"Good enough for me," Peter said. He licked his finger clean while Olivia stared at him with something like outrage.

"Hey, you were supposed to do half of that paperwork," she warned.

"Like I said: not tonight." He almost dared to dip his finger again but she pulled the bowl away and he was afraid she'd bite his hand if he went for it. "C'mon, Dunham," he cajoled her, "you've gotta have at least one fun bone in your body."

"Yeah, right here," she said, and flashed a purposefully-chosen finger.

 

  
An hour later, all three of them sat on the living room couch like dry-docked boats in a row, serene looks on their faces, looking straight ahead at the blank television. Most of the lights were off; just the spillover from the kitchen and the streetlights through the windows and one weird lamp that Walter had picked up at a yard sale. Someone had turned the thermostat up to seventy-five and it had cause both Bishops to shed their sweaters, sitting next to each other in identical undershirts.

Walter had shuffled up at some point and put a CD into the stereo. The song he'd picked was even and slow, with a melody that felt like rolling back and forth in a warm bed. Peter listened intently.

"Hey," he said peacefully, "I remember this song." Walter nodded through a fog. "You used to play this for me whenever we moved." Walter kept nodding. Maybe he was only nodding to the music. Peter turned his head gingerly, drifting toward Olivia. She was quiet, unmoving, like she were sleeping with her eyes open. He leaned a little closer to her, but she made no effort to recognize him. The music was humming in her ears, and when he spoke it was just another warm layer on the pile. "You know he's playing this for _you._ Because you moved. Here."

She blinked. Her eyes may have opened slightly wider. Peter watched for more of a reaction, but she stayed silent. He rolled back into place.

"Hey, Walter," Peter said finally, fidgeting against Olivia's shoulder. She should have known he'd be talky. "What is this stuff, anyway?"

Walter clapped his hands a little harder than necessary on his knees, smile still glued to his face. "I call it 'Brown Betty.' It's a wonder, isn't it?"


	6. September: Acclimation

### Acclimation 

Olivia wasn't used to the Bishop apartment yet. She'd had a week and some days, but it was slow going.

Her apartment had been clean lines and high ceilings and Crate & Barrel furniture. This...was different. Her headboard here was carved. The wood floors were old and scarred, and the rugs were collected from thrift stores. There were more blankets than she could imagine uses for, hanging over chairs and couches, colorful as plumage. Everything was buttery warm. It was cozy, which was not the first word that would have come to mind to describe the possible living arrangements of these men.

It gave her a strange feeling to think of them as men, and not as Peter or Walter or the caricatures she kept of them in her mind. They were not the nutty professor nor his sarcastic son. They were histories and actions and want and hurt, inhabiting a whole separate world between them. Like she was living in a den of animals, a piglet adopted by tigers. Or, alternately, a tiger adopted by aliens. They were possessive and protective, though it got on her nerves that they kept her behind them whenever one of them answered the front door (even for the _pizza guy_ \--"seriously, Peter?" she'd huffed, and when he'd given her a look she'd made ninja hands and said "I can take him"). After a while she accepted it as their way of being her family.

The house smelled like them; them and coffee and a licorice tea she had brought, of which Walter had become quite fond. Theirs was a smell she found foreign when she arrived, but began to recognize, began to crave. She piled blankets up to her chin watching television, letting that scent cuddle her cheeks.

And sure as she had been that she wouldn't, she found she liked the feeling of people in the rooms around her. Hearing Walter cook was a surprising joy, the scuff of his slippered feet and the little whisks of his spatula on the pans. His record collection, too, was full of homey, round sounds that he played at a comforting volume. His movements around the house were rhythmic, even and dancerly. He had become an expert at his own comfort out of obvious necessity.

Small interactions took her aback, and brought her unexpected delight. She considered herself a deeply private person, yet when Walter's beaming face interrupted her file study -- asking her benignly if she would like a pancake in the shape of her initials -- she felt contentment. On a Saturday she lay stretched out on the couch, almost sleeping, and Peter draped her with an ancient quilt. On a Sunday it happened nearly the same, except that he lifted her legs to sit beside her and when she moved to give him space he stopped her, pulled her legs back to rest on his knees and made it clear that this was how it would be: _so, relax already._ Olivia covered her face with her quilt, ostensibly to block the sound of Peter beginning to read the Swimsuit Edition out loud to her, while he kept his hand on her ankle, giving her tiny intermittent rubs as he remembered to. He did it like it was nothing, like it was ordinary and every day, and eventually it _was_ ordinary and every day, and Olivia learned (albeit slowly) that these things were all right to want.

There was a period of drought that followed, in which she had grown accustomed to touch, grown to like it but not learned how to ask for it. It was before their experiments had begun in earnest, during a time Walter wanted her in the house anyway for reasons he avoided elucidating. Difficult days would pass with difficult cases and she would wander downstairs to find Peter, situate herself near him and hope that he would make contact in some way, any way. She would fail almost invariably because he would avoid her, thinking he knew her, the private Olivia needing her space.

So he would give her space. And she would trail him. It confused the hell out of him for weeks. It might have ended poorly, might have turned her from him for an indefinite future had he turned (even once) and asked in frustration why she was following him. But it didn't; he didn't.

Eventually, he figured it out, and when he did, he didn't let it happen again. All he needed after that was the smallest look, the tiniest hopeful lean of her head and he would steer her to the couch, the place where they touched and it was ordinary and every day, and he would get her closer every time until finally it was ordinary and every day that they would be tucked together, her head on his shoulder, his chin at her temple, his arm around her and his voice low and friendly.


	7. September: Olivia's First Time

### Olivia's First Time

The day they picked to start the experiment felt like confidence: warm sun, cool air and the rusty smell of drying grass. Olivia was ready and impatient. Walter had proscribed caffeine, so she downed mug after mug of unsatisfying herbal tea while agitating around the lab. Walter, meanwhile, directed Peter in moving heavy things from desk to desk.

"Okay, that's it," Peter refused, after the fourth desk-swap. He put an ancient monitor down on the nearest surface. 

"Before I move this for the fifth time, Walter, go take a time-out and figure out your endgame." He twirled a metal chair over to the wall and stepped up, hitting open one of the high hinged windows. "Anyone else hot in here?"  


"Feel free to take off your shirt," Astrid offered, floating by him with a basket of cables and a saucy wink.  


"Ladies first," he said, fanning cool air into the room.  


"Age before beauty."  


"Youth before wisdom."  


" _Hey,_ " she objected. _"_ Five languages, buddy."  


Walter paused in the center of the lab to envision layouts. "Peter," he said, "do you think she'd prefer to be near Gene?"  


"Who, Olivia? She's right there, Walter, ask her yourself."  


And indeed Olivia was right there, lurking behind him, as if she could herd him into going faster. "That would depend," she said. "Would you prefer Gene medium-rare or well-done?" Walter looked at the cow, appalled, and half-covered his mouth.  


"I had forgotten about your affinity for combustion," he said.  


"How did you forget about that?" Peter asked, looking down from his chair.  


" _I_ didn't forget about that," Astrid said. "I got Brighton 17 to lend us full gear, just in case. Although," she called pointedly toward Olivia, "if it all goes up in smoke it will be incumbent upon the Department of Homeland Security to furnish replacements."

"What, now you 'know people' too?" Peter teased.  


"I've _always_ 'known people.'"  


"Sure. That's what got you this plum job, right?"  


Astrid smiled and tossed him one end of a cable. "Throw this over a pipe, will you?"  


"Only if you hide Olivia's mug. If she has any more tea, Walter's gonna cath her, and you know she'll _love_ that."  


"Deal."

 

  
By the time she was in the chair, Olivia's momentum had caught almost all of them. Astrid deftly checked the wires and groundings, Walter pulled drugs into syringes and slipped the IVs into Olivia's arms, and Peter took her baselines, watching the monitors reduce her life signs to line drawings of the Himalayas.  


Peter was the one to put the straps around her wrists and ankles, and he hung a little on the last one like it was something he regretted. His mood, alone, had declined steadily as they'd approached the start of things. She could tell from his face that he was meaning to ask her if she was sure about all this, and she was almost angry with him for introducing that kind of worry into her optimism.  


"Peter," she said indignantly, and he looked up with a resigned smile. "You look ridiculous in that suit." And he did. They all did: the fire suits were heavy and huge and day-glo yellow on black.  


"Yeah, I know," he sighed. He went back to standing by the monitors, memorizing the patterns of the lines she put out. When he spared himself a second to look back at her, she was still accusing her way right through him.  


"Walter," she said, without taking her eyes off Peter, "tell him it's going to be fine." Walter turned bewilderedly to his son; he'd put his helmet shield down prematurely and it was already fogged.  


"Compared to what?" Walter asked, and Olivia rolled her eyes.  


"Never mind," she told him, but to Peter she said, "It's just drugs. Nothing I haven't taken before. I'm going to be _fine_."  


Peter hit the _record_ switch and the decks whirred briefly. "I know."

 

 

 

 

 

  
Olivia blinked.

 

 

  
Saw nothing.

 

 

  
Kept blinking, like the first was just a bad start and one would eventually get it right. 

 

 

Still nothing: nothing for what felt like minutes.

 

 

Then the light started to cut in and out like an old closet bulb. 

 

Flickering accompanied by buzzing, ringing, whining in her ears, and then needles all over her body. Sound started glitching back. 

Someone was electrocuting her spine. 

Rather, her spine was electrocuting _her_ , from the inside. The LSD, maybe. 

She tried to move a hand to her back, but she couldn't; they were both strapped down. Peter was saying something. He had two mouths. Everything was playing in fast-forward. Again with her spine -- she could feel it up her back and into her neck. She heard herself say _OW,_ but it was a mutant, sluggish sound. Peter was coming into focus, over her, looking down, and she was so instantly nauseous that she barely had time to struggle before she vomited.

With that, every Bishop hand was on her: two pairs of one mind. One turned her head forcefully to the side to clear her airway, the other worked to undo the bindings at her wrists and feet, and the way they all moved was so familiar to her that she couldn't tell whose hands were whose.  


Details came faster than she could process, which was for the best, but eventually they all resolved in crystal clarity. There was vomit on her clothes and in her hair, the wretched, cold feeling of having pissed herself and the shame of not remembering how or when it had happened. It was not what she'd thought waking up would be. She'd imagined a glowing, triumphant moment followed by a congratulatory drink at the bar, a sense of accomplishment all around. Not the smell of bile and the panic of nausea and knees that felt like they'd been wrenched open with a crowbar.

"Get," she attempted, and was angry at how hard it was to speak. She could feel herself shaking and she didn't want to cry but there was something about shock and frustration and disappointment together that was making it feel inevitable. "Let me _up_ ," she muttered through her unforgiving mouth, and it was only seconds later that Peter (it was Peter, after all, whose hands were working the buckles, which meant it was Walter's steady hands holding her face) got through the rest of her restraints. His arms went under her back and Olivia was distantly aware that he had to argue with Walter for the right to pull her up to sitting.  


Swimming with dizziness, she clutched his shoulder, afraid beyond all other fears that she would vomit again, and this time on him. He cooed darkly, low words with round edges, jockeying for a position from which he could check the reactivity of her pupils. She took enough shallow breaths to avoid being sick and caught sight of her office door over his shoulder. She could make it. She needed to make it.  


Pushing off his body with stiff limbs, she lurched to her feet and hobbled more purposefully than even she thought she could toward the little room where she could hide.

 

 

Once the door was closed and she was alone inside, the tape that had been in fast-forward stopped so abruptly it snapped. All that was left of the noise and distortion was its dim echo. The pain had stopped, though she was still bracing for it. She touched her hair with stiff fingers and felt the same disgusting mess that was all over her suit.

She numbly attacked the humiliating task of peeling off her clothes one cold piece at a time, throwing them in a pile in the corner. While her face never lost its hard expression, she held her breath when she went for the bag of extra clothing that Walter had told both her and Peter to pack. Hers was a little red backpack, and she remembered being so anticipative of good things when she'd packed it that to need it now made for an unbearably naive contrast.  


There was a pair of sweatpants, warm from being at the bottom of the bag near the radiator. A shirt from the academy. A sweater from Cape Cod, although she didn't remember ever having bought it and it may have been Rachel's. She put these things on and tried not to feel like they were already dirty just from being on her.  


Dressed, she hung in the still center of the room. She didn't want to go out. She didn't want anyone in. She wished her office had a shower, but if not a shower, at least a sink.  


And then Peter knocked. She knew it was him; it wouldn't be anyone else. 

"I have water," he said quietly, like he was trying to convince her that he would keep whatever secret she had. "And a towel."  


She was sorely tempted.  


"And no Walter, I promise," he added. So she opened the door just a crack, and he slid through it as if he understood that any larger angle of the open door would feel like exposure. True to his word, he was holding a wet towel and a bucket of water. He closed the door behind him and stood against it. The way he was looking at her, Olivia was afraid he was going to reach out and try to wipe down her face and hair himself, but he only held the towel out to her. It was warm when she grabbed it out of his hand and it felt so good that she forgot to thank him.  


She silently swabbed the parts of her skin that were starting to feel crusty as things dried. There were parts of her hair that would have to wait for shampoo. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. The discharging nailgun in her knees was becoming more and more persistent the longer she stood. She couldn't look at Peter, just at the white towel that was turning shades of yellow and tan.  


Finally she had nowhere left to spot clean (save for the places Peter wasn't going to get to watch her do) and she stood, stupidly holding the dirty rag because she didn't think she could ask him to take it back.  


"I can turn around," Peter said, having to clear his throat a little before he said it. She shook her head, avoiding his eyes. The shakes had moved almost entirely to her middle, to her chest. Now that she felt cleaner she regretted letting him in. He took a step toward her and she froze in preparation to back up in lockstep, but he put a hand out to stop her.

"Gimme," he said, and then she understood that he wanted the towel, not to pull her into some sort of pitying embrace. She let him have it, foul smell and all. He dropped it into the bucket of water and curls of chartreuse rose to the surface like an oil spill. She almost gagged again, but he put the bucket on the floor, ignoring it.  


"Walter's worried about you," he said, as if she were obviously all right, as if nothing wrong had happened. "And he thinks you're going to hate him."  


"I don't hate him. And I'm fine."  


He nodded and didn't argue. "Good."  


" _I'm fine, Walter,_ " she said loudly through the door, and her voice wavered a little but it was the best she could ask for. " _I don't hate you._ "  


A relieved ' _excellent, thank you, very good,'_ penetrated back.  


"He told me to tell you that he sees, now, that it was too much to start with," Peter went on. "He wants you to know he'll cut back next time." He hesitated. "But _I_ want you to know that you don't have to so much as take an aspirin from him, ever again." Olivia nodded.  


"Yeah," she said quickly. "Got it." She wanted him to go, right then, as fast as possible. The task of keeping herself together was more difficult every minute.  


Peter wanted to say _I'm serious_ , and go on about her safety and what was worth it and what wasn't, but he could see that this was not the time. She was listening only enough to tell when he stopped talking, so she could say something like _yeah, got it,_ and get him the hell out. Which was fine, her choice, and besides that there wasn't much he could do for her.  


He waited for some sign that would let him feel okay about leaving her to decompress alone. She waited for him to leave, and when he didn't she glared up to make sure she sent him that message. They both stood there, awkwardly locking eyes, while her teeth started to chatter. There was a weird desperation about her that Peter was trying to understand; he felt bad for her in a way he didn't know how to classify.  


"Not what you expected, was it?" he asked sadly, and it was _that -_ \- the juxtaposition of her embarrassingly idealistic hopes and the pathetic reality -- that finally knocked tears into Olivia's eyes. She shook her head as she pulled her upper lip between her teeth, and he took steps toward her that she didn't ask for but didn't move away from. "I'm sorry," he whispered, and it might have been for her condition, for not looking out for her better, or for putting his arms around her shoulders and laying his hands out on her back. "I'm sorry."

For all Olivia's aversions to being comforted, once she was hidden in his collar it wasn't too bad: it was, by comparison, easier to be upset when she was invisible. His warmth was pacifying. Suddenly, she wanted him to stay right where he was; she held on to his shirt like a blanket. At some point, she felt his face nuzzle down hers, his breath beneath her ears, but if he spoke to her she didn't hear it over the raw song of her own tears in her head.  


She came out of it soon enough but stayed with him, his cheek against the top of her head as she looked out into the room. The light coming through the mottled windows was a nice, permeating shade of orange and she realized the sun was setting. The angle of it illuminated a sea of tiny, floating dust that drifted calmly toward nothing. Through the muffler of Peter's body she heard cars leaving the faculty lots and the faint vocal clouds of students on the walks. It was relaxing. She never opened the windows in her office, but she thought she might start.  


"Did I set anything on fire?" she asked, not lifting her head from his shoulder. Peter rubbed her back lightly and when he smiled his stubble tugged at her hair.  


"No," he said. "You were just... _out_ for a while."  


"Boring."  


"Yeah. Sorry."  


"There's always next time," she said, and Peter tensed but said nothing. A few minutes passed. The orange light turned pink. She was tired. She wanted to go home.  


"I can get you from here to a shower in fifteen minutes," Peter murmured.  


"Guaranteed?" she mumbled back.  


"If you let me carry you to the car," he risked.  


She didn't even pause. "I don't think so."  


"You sure?"  


"Never surer."  


"No guarantee, then."  


"I'll take what I can get."

 

  
She allowed Peter one hand on her as she stumbled out to their car, and didn't argue about where he put it.  


As they started out, it was at her elbow, a check against her balance.  


When they reached the granite steps beyond the front door, it went up under her shoulder.  


By the time they got to the SUV, it was under her opposite shoulder, his arm around her, and he was carrying more of her than she was and trying not to look it. When she tried -- like he knew she would -- to make the step up to the passenger's seat on a busted knee, he put his hands around her hips and boosted her so quickly she didn't have time to swat him away. And then he backed off and shut the door on her and went the long way around the car to hop in the driver's side, willing her to make peace with the idea of being carried into the house by the time they pulled into the driveway.  


And, like magic, she did.

 


	8. October: Peter's First Time

# OCTOBER

 

### Peter's First Time 

Peter had watched Olivia sit in the chair several times, now, since the first. And with the exception of that first time, it hadn't seemed horrible. Walter had gotten her doses straightened out, so her sessions seemed more like Twin Peaks-style hypnotherapy than a traumatic event. But even having observed the process, Peter's first time in the Chair was not what he'd expected.  


 

 

As they daubed ethanol in the crooks of Peter's elbows, Walter tried to remember the idiosyncrasies of treating his son. He dredged up bizarre memories of Peter's youth but nothing helpful, and Peter sat in the chair, already strapped in, while Walter rambled and threw out pieces of his childhood into the air. Sometimes Walter would put forth something Peter didn't recognize and Peter would know it was the _other_ Peter he was talking about, and in that way the experiment hurt him before it even began.   


"Walter?" Astrid said, "Do you want to place the electrodes, or should I?" It was how she drew him back from tangents: her voice was no different than if she had offered him a choice between Cheez-Its or Cheese Nips. Walter hesitated, pivoting on his toes with his finger still in the air.  


"I will do it." He sounded clipped and uneasy but he went to Peter with the best of his intentions.  


Peter felt Walter's fingers, soft as fresh beignets, pressing the little metal discs against his forehead. Even with their faces so close, Walter seemed afraid to look at him except in sidelong glances. Peter tried to reach for his hand, stop him for a moment to reassure him, but Olivia had strapped them down already.  


"Walter," he said, "it's going to be fine." Walter looked momentarily distracted.  


"Yes," he muttered, "I would like that."  


The Cortexiphan IV-bag, looking like Coca-Cola, was hung and ready. Walter had paired it with a cocktail of his choosing, the contents of which Peter was almost glad not to know. Walter leaned over him, meeting his eyes now but with his scientist-face on.  


"When the drugs take effect, you will-"  


"Walter, I think I have this speech memorized by now."  


Walter shuffled nervously.  


"Son, you must _try_ ," he said. Peter felt the worry in him, and compounded it with his own. He could only hope that when this thing didn't work out, Walter wouldn't be too disappointed.  


"I promise," he said.  


Walter stood still, like he would stand there forever without a push. He looked at his son with the wires coming out from his head, strapped into that chair where Walter had seen so many other lives go awry. He wanted to tear Peter away, undo the restraints and pull him out, tell him his father would never ask this of the only son he had left. But Walter wanted his son to live and he wanted his son to stay in a universe that wouldn't collapse and disappear, and that meant there were things they'd all have to do.  


"Walter," Peter prompted gently, "let's get this over with." Walter seemed startled, but his hands went to the IV line and he flipped the plastic toggle before he could think any more about it. He leaped back behind Olivia, afraid to watch but being unable not to. _Astrid, the monitors,_  he said. _Astrid, the monitors!_ and then he realized he wasn't speaking out loud.  


"Astrid, the monitors; turn on the monitors, please," he said quietly. She did, and there was his son in so many green lines on the screen. He was riveted, as if by watching he could keep them steady.  


"Peter," he said. He would not forget his responsibility. "Peter, open your eyes." It happened almost immediately, so quickly Walter thought the drugs hadn't taken, though his heart rate said they had.

"Peter, I want you to tell me-"  


"Walter?" Peter whispered.  


"Yes, son, I-"  


"Dad?"  


Walter smiled indulgently and almost responded again, except that he was watching Peter's brain waves and realized Peter was not talking to him, and then he couldn't think of the next thing to say.  


Peter's eyes slipped closed and the next five minutes passed in near silence. As resilient as Peter was, Walter had chosen the drugs specifically. It didn't take long for him to get where Walter had sent him.  


Walter watched the monitors. Astrid watched Walter. Olivia watched Peter, and Peter watched something that made him weep like a child.  


 

 

Waking him up was no trouble, which came as an immense relief to Walter, who had given himself a headache from the tension in his neck. He hurried to lay his hands on Peter's chest as he gasped for air, petting him unconsciously until his heartbeat slowed.  


As Peter's red eyes opened, only half-lucid, what he saw was Walter ( _which one_?) in front of him, undoing the straps with shaking hands and hurrying to ascertain his state of awareness so he could ask, voice wavering, "Peter... which one did you call 'dad'?"


	9. October: Knees

### Knees

  
After Peter's first test, they'd all piled through the Bishops' front door looking vaguely ashamed. It had gone fine, by objective measures, and maybe they would have been more excited if Walter hadn't asked that sad little question. It had ended badly enough that, after coming home, Peter had gone straight to his bedroom. He'd laid down on the bed and stared at the ceiling and tried to forget it, to tell himself it was all in his head. How did Olivia let them keep strapping her down? How many times had she done this? How could he do this again?  


He knew he wouldn't be sleeping, so he waited until everything was quiet and then he went downstairs. If Walter hadn't been snoring on the fold-out bed, Peter might have tried to make coffee and pass the night in front of the television. Instead he pulled on a jacket from the hooks by the door and went for a walk. The emptiness of the air helped him, as did the wind and the anonymity of the dark.

 

 

When he came back his joints were aching, as they'd ached since he'd come down off the Chair. He was aware that Olivia was waiting on the steps before he saw her. She watched him as he approached. 

Autumn was a good time of year for Peter. The turning trees brought out the russet in his hair and made his eyes look like the sky. Of course in the moonlight Olivia could see none of that, just the blue-white highlights on his head and shoulders and the glimmer that he carried with him at all times, the little northern lights she didn't bother to un-see anymore when she was tired.  


"Hey, partner," she said. 

Peter stood a few paces away, his hands in his pockets."Hey yourself," he said. He wasn't worried; she wouldn't ask him to talk about how he felt. That wasn't her style. And he was right; she didn't ask him anything. Just let the wind blow between them for a few minutes, with dried leaves scraping by like mice on the street. He was careful not to stare at her for too long. She still got self-conscious sometimes, which struck him as bizarre considering she sat unconscious in a metal chair in front of three people for hours at a time. "My knees hurt like a bitch," he said, after a while. She ducked her head with a wry smile.

"Yeah, it happens," she said.  


"Every time?" His eyebrows went up.  


She was silent.  


"And you didn't think you should tell anyone?"  


"I'm telling _you_ ," she shrugged. Peter shook his head, staring into the sidewalk. He felt a little creeping sadness for her and chewed his lip.   


"So what else do I get to look forward to?" he asked. She looked off into the dark and didn't answer. Whatever _would_ come next, she'd get it first. "I'm sorry," he said.  


"I'm not." She stood up, dusting the leaf grit from her flannel pajama pants. "We're saving the world. Right?"  


"You, maybe. I'm preparing for a lucrative career in the sideshow arts."  


"Don't get your hopes up. I'm pretty sure my poster's gonna be bigger than yours," she said, smiling.   


Peter squinted at her pants. "Is that a magentaplaid?" he asked.  


"A gift from Walter. He said he wanted me to have something soft to sleep in." She paused. "Actually, he said sleep _with_ , and then he turned all red," she waved her fingers in front of her neck, "you know how he does." 

Peter felt better watching her. She was relaxing, gradually, since she'd come to live with them. Still, Peter knew better than to take her under his arm and shepherd her inside. They were getting there, but they weren't there yet. Instead he walked to the front door and let her follow him in.  


The next morning he slept late, almost until noon, and when he came downstairs he saw she'd fallen asleep stretched full-length on the couch. He almost didn't put the blanket over her, but he did. He could always blame it on Walter.

 


	10. October: Tea and Premonitions

### Tea and Premonitions

Olivia had started following him; Peter'd gotten that much. She'd been at it for days and he wasn't sure why. He figured maybe it was territorial, making the house feel like _her_ house. Or maybe she was just avoiding Walter, and he could absolutely understand that. He could _empathize_ with that. But he knew that wasn't it, because she was on his tail even when Walter wasn't there.

It might have been an anxiety about being alone in a space she didn't know how to fill. After all, these weren't her possessions. Not her furniture, not her television and not her fridge. Peter wondered how comfortable _he'd_ be trying to live his life in someone else's rooms, and he could understand how she might be reluctant to let her guard down. Maybe she was looking to him to see how to live here, how to _be_ here, in which case he supposed he was doing as well as anything by just going about his business as usual.  


He knew she needed space. It was something he'd been careful to remain aware of since she'd agreed, so hesitantly, to move in. He'd thought hard about the arrangement, analyzed his tendencies and hers and Walter's and the odds that things would work. He'd concluded that a lack of privacy would be the first thing to send Olivia packing, so he'd tried vigilantly to let her come to him when she wanted to. But what was he supposed to do when she was five steps behind him, all the time?  


It wasn't something he could even _ask_ her about, because if it weren't part of their repartee, and if it were even mildly unrelated to work, she'd just smile and pretend she had no idea what he was talking about. And, while asking her why she was following him was a pretty surefire way to get her to stay at the opposite ends of the house and never come in contact with him again, there was a reasonshe was doing this and what he really wanted was not for her to stop, but to figure out what it was.   


Oddly, the loss of his ownprivacy didn't bother Peter, though he was sure it should have. Olivia wasn't an intrusive presence, just a confusing one. Most of the time she occupied herself in a way that justified being near him: she brought out her laptop while he worked on some bizarre tangle of wires and circuit boards on the dining room table, she organized Walter's massive pile of loose-leaf recipes while Peter made dinner, or she poked the fire in the fireplace while Peter showed Walter how to recover a password for the fortieth time on the desktop in the living room.  


Peter pretended he didn't notice that she was a constant fixture in the rooms he visited, or that she didn't go to bed until he'd already gone. The longer it went, however, the more it felt like she was waiting for something, and damned if he knew what that was, but it bothered him itchily.  


 

 

Peter made brownies in the kitchen to see if Olivia would organize Walter's recipes one more damned time. She didn't, though. She went to the cabinets, right behind him, so close she was practically brushing his back, and starting emptying the dishwasher, putting their drinking glasses into neat rows. At least, that's what it sounded like. He wasn't going to turn around and look, except he needed the brownie pan and that was in the cabinet by her knees.  


So he did turn, he knelt and tapped the side of her leg gently, expecting her to move it away, but instead (and only for the briefest moment) she leaned toward him, first. And so he opened the cabinet, took out the pan, poured the brownie batter, scraped out the bowl with a spatula and then he told Olivia to sit down.  


"What?" she said.  


"Sit down," he said again. "We're having tea."

 

 

Olivia fixed the last glasses in their rows before sitting at the table, because even if the task were invented, she couldn't just leave it unfinished. She waited as Peter boiled water, and it felt like a long time with the owl clock staring sagely out the window and Peter blessedly _not_ staring at her. She'd traced the wood grain of the table so many times she knew it by heart, so instead of wearing out her fingertips she just sat inertly while Peter put teabags into mugs.

She knew he'd noticed what she'd been doing, tracking him around the house. She didn't think he'd figured out _why_ , and that was good because she was sure he'd invent a better reason than hers: a less embarrassing reason, because he was generous toward her character in that way.  


It wasn't like she was particularly ashamed of herself. It was just that this was all too awkward and clumsy to be coming from her; it was a behavior she hadn't expected of herself and the fact that she was acting this way was bothering her as much as she was sure it was bothering him. It was one of those things that was becoming more common the longer she lived: a way in which she was different from other people; a way that separated her from the things she wanted, even though those things were the same things that other people wanted: ordinary things that weren't ordinary for her.  


She couldn't just ask for a hug. It was never going to be that easy for her. It was a practical miracle she'd ever had Peter's hands on her at all, at least in a non-lab-related capacity. But since she'd gotten comfortable with those hands on her ankles and her legs on his knees, she'd wanted more. Just a little more, but a little more all the time. If she weren't living with him, she would have told herself something about tough luck. But she _did_ live with him, because he'd _asked_ her to, damn it, and if he felt like it was such a great idea to touch her then maybe he should keep it up.  


Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder. Peter's.From behind her, his other hand stretched to put her tea on the table.  


"Thanks," she said. 

To Peter it sounded a little sad, a little lonely, and a lot Olivia. He didn't want to be too self-important, but it clearly wasn't the tea she wanted so badly. Though, if he were honest with himself, it wasn't exactly _him_ she wanted, either. There had been no flirting in her time at the house so far. Not even any good old-fashioned banter.  


Peter realized his hand was still on her shoulder, her iron-band muscles beneath his fingers. He weighed how much he could help her against the odds that she'd let him.  


"Hm," he said. "Come on," he said. "Couch." He didn't say what he was going to do because then she could say why she was refusing. Instead, he went ahead of her and she followed him in and when he threw a fat pillow on the floor in front of the couch she looked at him funny. "Sit," he said. When she balked, he just waited silently until she did it. He'd figured out that he could win some arguments by not arguing, and the counter-intuitiveness of that delighted him.

He sat on the couch behind her, bracketing her with his legs, and put his hands over her shoulders so assuredly that it didn't seem as forward as it was. He almost asked her to take the remote from the coffee table in front of her and find something on television, trying to preempt any interruptions or protests on her part, but then he realized that she wasn't saying anything. It surprised him.  


He moved his hands over her shirt, flexing and pushing chastely, waiting for the scales of her unease to tip. But a minute passed and she'd still said nothing, and he thought that maybe she wasn't _going_ to say anything. And the room was quiet but it wasn't like the stifling, wall-bending awkwardness he'd thought it could be. So. He moved his hands with more purpose, with firmer pressure, and realized that _he_ was the one who felt like he had to speak. To justify this, maybe: not just the action but the fact that he'd wanted to do it, that he'd done it half for her but half for himself and he wasn't sure to what end.  


"Breathe," he said, because she wasn't really doing that with any regularity and he hoped he wasn't hurting her. "Breathe."  


He kept going, working her back, working her neck, all in a careful and therapeutic manner but his mind was drifting in strange ways. He knew maybe it was crazy but the silence they were in had a shape, a capacity, like it was made to be filled only with very specific words, and those words were, _I love you,_ and, _you know that, right?_ And the thing about that was that he didn't even want to say those words at this moment because he didn't know how true they'd be, but he had the weirdest feeling that they were reverse-engineering whatever it was between them. That the spaces would always appear before the words they were meant to house. That the intimacy would always be in place before the touches were manifest.  


Olivia turned her head back to him and he realized he must have slowed down, or stopped, or drifted too far in some other obvious way. He looked down at her and her face was so relaxed, and he was still half-embedded in his thoughts about love and fate, and if he had kissed her before December it would have been at this second. He didn't, though. He let the moment that was built for kissing her pass, but not without noting it was there.

 

 

When Peter stopped touching her it was only because his hands were exhausted. The tea was long-cold. Her back had loosened and relaxed and her head had dropped to her chest. She was swaying slightly with the direction of his force, malleable and warm. He was sorry to have to stop.  


"You still awake?" he said quietly.   


She hummed. "Yeah," she said. Her voice was rough, creased by her bent throat. Her butt was asleep, which made sense because she hadn't changed position since she'd sat down, not wanting him to stop if she shifted or moved. She didn't even care that her butt was asleep because her head was like a mug of hot buttered rum. Her eyelids were weighted and she was on the verge of feeling overhandled, but being on the verge made every touch feel distinct and amplified and delicious.  


It was almost her bed time.  


It was almost _Walter's_ bed time, Peter realized, which meant that at any moment Astrid would be dropping him off from whatever secret thing they did on Friday nights.  


"Better get upstairs if you want to skip the Walter Bishop bedtime circus," he warned gently. "While I think you may have seen _almost_ every pair of underwear that man owns, I'll bet he has a few surprises left. I think there's a Christmas pair coming up in the rotation: just a waistband and some dangling seams." He felt her ribs shake a little against his shins in a small, silent laugh, and then she rolled up onto her feet and stretched with her back to him.  


"Thanks for that," she said to him, not turning around. "You're pretty good."  


"I know," he said. He caught her smirk in three-quarter profile as she headed for the stairs.  


"Goodnight," she said.  


And there it was again, he saw, that die-cut hollow between them: _goodnight, sweetheart. I love you, too._

 


	11. October: Mighty Mouse

### Mighty Mouse

Olivia had mashed herself into the couch. The cushions padded out around her and it looked like she'd dug a hole. Walter would have to find another place to sleep because she was sure as hell not moving (let alone climbing the stairs with her knees as they were) and it was sure as hell his fault. She was tired and restless and cranky and the Bishops could deal with it.

 

 

"I found something for Olivia," Walter said as Peter was turning down an upstairs bed for him. "It's in the cabinet under the television. I think she would like to see it tonight."   


"That's great, Walter," Peter said, but whatever half-cocked idea Walter had about what Olivia would like tonight, Peter was pretty sure it'd be _wrong_. 

Walter climbed into bed with _Cosmos_ and arranged the blankets over his legs, meticulously exposing one bare foot. _To regulate my temperature,_ as he insisted. He opened the book on his lap. "Peter," he said, holding a page between his fingers, "don't forget."  


  


 

Peter went back downstairs to Olivia, still parked on the couch. She hadn't turned on the television, probably because she'd have had to move to reach the remote. She had, however, thought to grab a box of Cheez-Its before she made camp; Peter wasn't sure if it had been a fresh box but her fingers were already scraping the bottom with every reach so he diverted to the kitchen to bring back a new distraction.  


"Your pick," he said, leaning over the back of the couch with his hands out. "We have dried mangoes or rainbow Goldfish. If you want the Goldfish be aware that Walter's probably picked out all the purple ones." She looked mildly disappointed.  


"Didn't we get ice cream yesterday?" she asked.   


"Yeah, we did. And then Walter made Baked Alaska."   


"How'd that turn out?" It was an offhand, rhetorical question as she eyed the snacks, deciding, but Peter answered.  


"I wouldn't know," he said, "I left when Walter said he was making Baked Alaska." 

Olivia took the Goldfish and left the mangos to Peter.  


"I have another, potentially grimmer choice for you," he said. She looked at him, intrigued. Why she was always more interested in the Strange And Twisted he did not know. "Walter said he _has_ something for you." Her eyebrow went up.  


"He _has_ something for me? Has _what_?"  


"Well, that would be the potentially grim choice. I don't know. Apparently it's in the cabinet," he said.  


"You think it's something bad. Why are you even telling me?" she asked. Peter thought about it.  


"I'm curious," he said. "Sometimes it's so bad it's spectacular. Of course, that's not to say that this would be one of those times."  


Olivia took a breath through her nose, since her mouth was stuffed with crackers, and mumbled something like _mwo ay._  


"Is that 'no way' or 'okay'?" Peter asked.   


"Let's see it," she said. Peter was almost relieved. If she hadn't said yes he would have had to wait until she was sleeping to look, and that could have been _hours_. He got down on the floor and opened the cabinet.  


It was a video. Homemade, with labels that read 'Olivia,' but he didn't tell her that, just held up the tape before putting it into the VCR. Walter was lucky they even _had_ a VCR. He guessed they were just as lucky Walter hadn't picked Betamax. He turned back to her.  


"You sure?" he asked. She slouched further behind the bag in her hands.  


"I don't see how it could be worse than the drugs he gave me five hours ago," she said. He couldn't really argue with that. He pressed play and joined her on the couch. She made no motion to get closer to him, so he didn't try. He tore a mango slice in half with his teeth. 

The television showed only rolling static as the VCR pathetically tried to adjust the tracking on what might have been a 20-year-old tape. If it played at all, Peter was prepared to see more lab footage, or maybe a young Olivia playing in front of that normal-looking preschool. Something that would strike Walter as nostalgic or sweet, but that might not play as well to Olivia. But when the image flipped into its right place, it was something else.  


"3-2-1 Contact?" he said. "Seriously?" _Thank god._ He remembered this show. It was science-y enough; maybe Walter'd assumed since Olivia had gotten into NOVA... But then was a hiccup in the tape, a glitch that played with the sound, and Peter realized he didn't just generally remember this show, he really, _specifically_ rememberedthis show.   


"Peter," Olivia said. She was staring at the television. She'd stopped sucking down the crackers. "I know this."  


"Me too," Peter said softly. "Walter made this tape for me when I was little. He taped every episode." He leaned forward on the couch, the bag of mangoes crackling beneath his thigh. "I can't believe he kept them." Olivia put the Goldfish on the floor.  


"No, I know _this_ _video_ ," she said. "After this..." and she got down on all fours and hit fast-forward. The show sped by in squiggly distortions, and as the credits rolled, she said "...Mighty Mouse." She took her finger from the button and a cartoon title card appeared and the sound came back in the middle of: _here I come, to save the day..._

"I feel like I've seen this a hundred times," she said. "I guess now I know where." She turned away from the screen to look back at Peter. And then behind Peter, at Walter, who had come down the stairs at some point and was just standing there.  


"I would have liked to show you The Rifleman instead, but there was no way to get a hold of it in nineteen eighty-two," he said quietly. Peter's head turned so fast he almost sprained his neck.  


"Walter?" he said, demanding some sort of explanation.  


"It calmed her down, after the tests," Walter said, and that was all Peter was going to get.  


Olivia was unprepared for the discussion the situation demanded. She turned immediately back to the television, unreachable. Peter stared at his father in the dark.  


"I've finished my chapter," Walter said. "Now I would very much like some pineapple juice."


	12. October: Orange Soda

### Orange Soda

  
"I'm not sure how to break it to him," Peter said, swiping up soy sauce with his finger. Olivia looked at him over a tuft of lo mein and took the last swig of her orange soda. "He really thinks this stuff is going to work on me."

"Maybe it will."

"It won't. I'm not like you. I wasn't groomed for this."

"Maybe you were." She shrugged before taking the last egg roll. Peter fixed her with a dubious stare.

"It's been more than a week, and all I've done is work toward knee replacement surgery. Don't tell me you're on _his_ side," he said. He reached, took the egg roll from her hand and took a big, crunchy, greasy bite before handing it back.

"The alternative is _your_ side."

"God forbid."

They munched in contented silence for a while, Peter strewn across his chair like a teenager and Olivia folded over the table, rolling up the empty duck sauce packets. The owl clock clicked softly, its smooth round eyes tick-tocking back and forth over the kitchen table. According to Owly, it was after midnight. In the living room, Walter's _Jeopardy_ marathon had switched over to infomercials. Peter hoped he hadn't missed Final Jeopardy, or he'd make Peter look up episode transcripts to find out what it was.

Peter put his arms behind his head and stretched. He wanted to say, _I don't know how much more of this I can take,_ but he couldn't, not in front of her. Not when she'd been at it for weeks, and he'd comparatively just begun. He pushed his chair back and went to the fridge, pulled out the water pitcher and then, "Yeah, I'll get it," came out of his mouth and he didn't know why. Olivia was staring at him.

"What?" she said. Peter stared at the water, then at her.

"You...don't want any?" he said. It seemed like a reasonable thing. Apparently it was reasonable to her, too, and she went back to busily slouching as Peter took glasses down from the shelf. Then, almost as an afterthought, she asked, "Grab me another orange soda instead?"

"'Livia," Peter said from behind her, "turn around." She did, because something in his voice was off. He was standing there, a can of orange soda already in his hand. "Why am I holding this?" he asked. He was smiling but not because it was funny. "First time's weird. Second time's creepy."

Olivia was a little speechless.

"Walter said the cortexiphan worked with perception," Peter said slowly. "That your perceptions can...change things. Did you make this happen?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly.

Peter came back to the table.

"We should ask Walter in the morning," Olivia said. Peter nodded. He rattled the takeout bag, located their fortune cookies, and handed one to her on an outstretched palm. 

"Want to see your future?" 


	13. October: Happy Birthday, Olivia

### Happy Birthday, Olivia

Peter sat on the steps in front of their house, his size and shape aggrandized by his black overcoat. He'd positioned himself dead-center with his shoulders forward, legs set apart and elbows on his knees, taking up as much space as he could. His head was down, but his eyes glowered out at the street. There was barely enough room for Olivia to sit down next to him; she had to push one of his knees out of the way. He was focused, but not on her. He was concentrating hard on projecting a terrible energy out into the dark.

"You going to stay out here all night?" she asked.  


"Yes," he answered, quietly and immediately. She nodded and settled into the step beside him. They sat together for minutes, and to his credit none of his warning anger seeped toward her. He didn't let it. He was a nuclear reactor, well contained.  


Pumpkins had started appearing on the steps of neighboring houses, with nylon spiderwebs and fake tombstones from the holiday devotees. The leaves were as bright as they were ever going to be, and half of them were already in piles on the ground. Peter almost wished for a rake to occupy himself over the coming hours, but he wouldn't want to risk dilution of his purpose. A raking man would not be nearly as clear in his message as one who was sitting and waiting.  


Olivia wanted to tell him he didn't have to do this, but she knew he knew that already. He was here because it was significant to him somehow, or because this action was meant to speak directly to her. She couldn't pin down exactly what it was meant to say, in part because there was something so strong and deep in his determination that the ideas it gave her were ideas she would have ordinarily dismissed.  


She wanted to tell him that her stepfather didn't bother her anymore, that it was a part of her past that was ugly and irritating but that didn't wound her as deeply now as it once had. It would be a flat lie, and he would know immediately, so she didn't say that either. She knew, too, that it _did_ bother her, and that Peter sitting out here on the porch was making her proud to know him. Proud to mean whatever it was she meant to him that had him sitting out here, making sure that no spiteful envelopes would make it near her tonight. She stayed silent, but Peter knew there were words she was stifling.  


"Just say it," he said. Olivia looked up at the sky, squinting with indecision.  


"You don't have to do this," she said. Inane or not, it was better than a lie. She wasn't quite brave enough or sure enough of her position in his life to say _'thank you.'_  


Peter kept staring inscrutably straight ahead. He was mulling, parsing, dissecting her words. He wanted to find assurance that she wasn't asking him to go inside and leave the whole thing alone.  


"Is there any small part of you that _wants_ to get that card?" he asked finally. "For whatever reason."  


She looked hard at him. "Like what? The possibility for more revenge?" She twisted her hands together. "The beauty of a nine-year-old shooting her abusive stepfather is that no one blames the nine-year-old. I had my chance. I missed."  


"As I remember, you hit him twice," he said.  


"He lived: I missed," she said. Peter felt a little chill run down his spine. She was talking like some of the colder-blooded associates he'd ever known, and he wasn't sure if it unsettled him or turned him on.  


"You know if he ever gets _near_ you-"  


"I can't prosecute a man for sending a birthday card," she interrupted tersely. "And I'm sure I can't shoot him for showing up."  


"I was going to say I know some guys," Peter said with a quiet smile. Olivia relaxed a little.   


They watched the empty street together. The streetlights weren't strong enough to show the colors of the trees or the details of anything beyond their small spotlights, so everything was a series of gray shadows from the ground to the indigo sky. It was murky and crisp at the same time, and the smell of illegally burning leaves was a haunting, faint pleasure. Wind swirl the leaves and Olivia tried imagining that her stepfather was parked a block away, that he was watching her now. She imagined he might see Peter, might underestimate Peter, and she could only hope he'd get close enough to be corrected.  


"No," she said. "I don't want that card."  


Peter nodded. "Then go inside," he said, firmly but not pejoratively. "Get some sleep." Olivia stood and stretched into the air, pulling for a last taste of leaf smoke before she turned and walked inside. Peter resumed his stance, shifting his leg into the spot she'd vacated. A dog barked a few blocks away, and he knew it wasn't because her stepfather was stalking up the sidewalk but he couldn't help that it put him on alert.  


A minute later the door opened again and then there was a plate being lowered in front of him with a slice of Olivia's birthday cake and a fork stuck into it. It was a big slice, probably half of what was left: the 'Oli' of her name was scrawled in shiny red icing. He took the plate from her hands and was about to turn around and thank her but something touched the back of his head, something light and soft and he froze because he couldn't tell if it was fingertips or lips that were pressing into his hair. 

Whatever it had been, it was gone the next moment, and Olivia obscured its memory by ruffling his hair. Then she was gone again, and the door closed behind her, and for a while after that Peter couldn't quite feel as intimidating as he wanted to.

 

 

Olivia woke up and came downstairs and Peter was gone: not on the porch, not in the kitchen. Walter was bumbling around the coffeemaker, testing the usual three-to-one odds that he would produce the equivalent of crude oil instead of a drinkable liquid. He didn't seem particularly troubled, which meant he knew where Peter was, but he didn't immediately offer that information, which meant that Peter had probably instructed him not to.  


"Walter?" she said, and he didn't turn around. He was scooping heaping tablespoons of grounds, of which he didn't seem to be keeping count, into a filter. At least he'd remembered the filter. "Where's Peter?"  


There was a pause as Walter tried to remember what Peter had told him to say instead of the truth, although it was questionable that Peter had told him the truth at all. And that was all right. Really, she didn't even know why she was asking, because she knew where he'd gone. The key to her old apartment was missing from its hook.  


"He's bringing donuts," Walter said.  


As if on cue the door opened and Peter backed in with a big waxed pastry bag in the crook of his elbow. He had his other hand in his pocket, ready to draw out her key to replace on its hook, but when he saw her standing there he pulled his hand out empty. It would wait.  


"Donuts!" he said brightly, as if Walter weren't already taking the bag from him and putting his whole face into the opening to scuba dive for his strawberry-frosted. Olivia watched Peter over Walter's ducked head and he met her eyes frankly. She almost asked. She almost needed to know if he'd found a letter. If he'd thrown it in the dumpster behind her building. If she were to go back there, if she might find it. He waited for her to ask, not going to say a word about it if she didn't. It was her choice, and his face gave her no clue either way. It seemed like a long time that they stood there, looking, and he stayed patiently opaque. Finally Walter emerged from the bag, sniffing headily.  


"I've always found that the scent of fresh donuts reminds me of formaldehyde," he exulted. Olivia expected a quick flash of sarcasm from Peter, but he held her gaze steadily, still waiting. Walter looked between the two of them, vaguely aware of some meta-discussion to which he wasn't privy. Olivia didn't want to let the moment pass away. She knew if she didn't ask Peter now, he wouldn't tell her later. He would take her acceptance of his silence to mean that she didn't want to know, and he would gently craft the truth she wanted to hear at any and all points forward.  


She almost asked out of a simple need to be in control of the facts, but she stopped herself. Maybe for once, for this one year out of many, she could allow herself to imagine that there was no card, that she was not a person who received cards like that, and that she was part of a family who signed their cards and put them next to a birthday cake instead of under her door.  


"Olivia?" Walter said tentatively. "Can I have half of your cruller?" It was a French Cruller, technically, and Olivia wasn't surprised that Peter seemed to always make sure there was more than one of them in every box of donuts he ever brought home. And no, she didn't mind if Walter hacked it up for sampling, but she'd have to answer him out loud, and that would break the spell and seal her ignorance.  


She took a deep breath and decided it was okay to do something nice for herself.  


"Yeah Walter, go for it," she said. She gave Peter one last look and he gave her a serious smile, and then he was on his way to the coffeemaker to fix Walter's mess.  


"I'm with you about the formaldehyde, Walter," he said over his shoulder as Walter plucked a dark one from the bag, "but I love my donuts and if you eat the sprinkles off my chocolate-frosteds again, there will be consequences."


	14. October: Halloween

### Halloween

It was Halloween, thoroughly and unavoidably. There were bats hanging from the lab ceiling that looked less like the plastic versions Olivia had envisioned when she told Walter he could hang bats from the ceiling and more like half-bald specimens from the zoology collection. Walter was head-to-toe in flannel and denim, which probably had a lot to do with why Gene was painted blue, though Astrid put her foot down when she'd seen Walter tying two-pound slabs of bacon to his bare feet.

"First of all," she said, "I don't know who bought you slabs of bacon-" Peter mouthed _not me_ but was probably lying "-but you are _not_ skating around this lab on those because I don't think you even know where we _keep_ the mop bucket." She handed him a pair of scissors to cut the twine. "Second of all, you know it wasn't Paul Bunyan that skated around the giant frying pan, right?"  


"Miss Farnsworth, have you ever had bacon strapped to your feet?" Walter asked her as she knelt to put the bacon into a trash bag. "It's _quite_ a sensation. You see, the fat liquifies at body temperature."

She held up a hand to cut him off and pressed a bouquet of paper towels into his hands. "These. Around your feet. Go wash. Now."

 

 

Olivia couldn't opt out of the Halloween party, considering she lived at the venue. She knew that even if she went back to her old, empty apartment or some anonymous bar, Peter would come looking for her. He'd find her, too. Somehow he always found her. She wouldn't be surprised if someday he confessed to GPS-ing her phone on a regular-to-obsessive basis.  


It wasn't that she didn't like Halloween, or parties, or them. She was just...tired. Her knees had settled into a dull and irregular ache, she had headaches all the time, and nothing really impressive was coming from their work: no startling abilities, no pathway to world-saving. And while she felt sheltered by the Bishops -- living in their house, camping on their couch and in their spare room and having her meals cooked (albeit experimentally, at times) by a father who wasn't hers but seemed to have the aspiration -- she was still shedding the feeling of being an imposition. Peter and Walter couldn't have been better to her, but her tender sense of solitude was still sometimes abraded by their offerings of comfort and affection. 

She shuffled her paperwork to the side of her desk and stretched back in her chair, her hands flexed out behind her head and her eyes squeezed shut. She heard footsteps behind her and hands grazed over hers, lightly holding her palms. From their warmth, their size and their unapologetic invasion of her space she knew it was Peter.  


"Boo," he said, tugging gently at her fingertips before releasing. "I assume the costume I _haven't_ seen you working on is stashed away somewhere to up the surprise factor?"  


"Yeah, of course it is," she said. "I've been not-working-hard on it for months."  


"I'm excited."  


"You're gonna love it."  


"So what is it?" He swung around her desk and pulled up a chair. Olivia recovered from her backward stretch with a forward slump over the desk. She curled a finger at him, and he leaned in toward her.  


"Get this," she said, "I'm going as an FBI agent."  


Peter made a very disappointed face before shaking his head. His arms retreated across the desk as he sat back.  


"No, really: I've got a gun and a badge and everything," she said. "I'm all about authenticity."  


"And here I thought you were cool," Peter sighed.  


Olivia reclined, biting her lip because that was the way she covered unexpected smiles. She reached for a pen to tap around; sometimes she needed a focal object when he was the only thing in staring distance. "What about you?" she asked, watching the pen tip make little dots where it bounced off her folders.  


"It's a secret," he said. He folded his elbows casually behind his head. "You're the FBI agent; figure it out." He flashed her a grin and spun his chair toward Walter's sprawling area of the lab.  


"Walter," he called, "you almost ready?"  


Two heads in welding helmets popped up like prairie dogs amidst the clutter of equipment.  


"Almost!" Walter shouted. He waved a gloved hand at them. A tub-like machine was making a small roaring sound.  


" _Two hands, Walter,_ " Astrid said loudly, and Walter's hand dove immediately back to task.  


"That woman has nerves of steel," Peter said. "Making dry ice is _not_ a group activity."  


"Aw, where's your Halloween spirit?" Olivia teased.  


"I'm saving my Halloween spirit for the ride home, because I'm pretty sure Walter's going to be making that stuff sublimate in the car. You might want to ride with Astrid."  


"And miss you getting spread out on the hood of a cop car and searched for paraphernalia? No way."

 

 

Peter didn't end up with the cavity search Olivia was hoping for, but not because they weren't pulled over by two separate police vehicles.  


"You might want to stand away from this stuff," Peter told the first officer, who was sniffing at the CO2 clouds spilling over the open windows for _eau de weed_. It didn't help that Walter was panting and coughing in the back seat.  


"Too much oxygen displacement!" he said, waving his hands to move the gas out the open window. "I'm lightheaded!" Peter smiled wanly at the officer.  


"You're not gonna believe this," he said, "but we're FBI." The officer rolled his eyes.  


"Step out of the car, sir."  


Astrid had pulled over a few blocks behind them to watch the drama unfold. When the cop started putting them through sobriety tests one at a time, she started her engine again and breezed past, waving at them with an unnecessarily bright smile.

 

 

When they finally got on the road again it was almost dark, Walter having given the cop a dry ice tutorial and all three of them having walked straight lines and counted backwards (Peter's contempt for authority had him counting in binary first, then in primes, which had almost gotten him arrested, but Olivia had _finally_ and reluctantly whipped out her FBI identification).  


"Now no more water on the dry ice, Walter," Peter ordered as he pulled back intro traffic. "You can wait until we're home." But he'd no sooner stopped at the next red light when he heard Walter's soft _'oh dear'_ from the back seat, accompanied by malevolent bubbling and hissing. "Walter..." he growled, but the white steam was already curling out from under his seat, clinging to the floor but rising as it ran into the doors.  


"It was an accident!" Walter said.  


"Yeah, I'm sure," Peter huffed, looking around the streets for more marked cars. "Olivia, if you would-" he said, and Olivia reached into the back seat.  


"The water, Walter" she demanded, her hand open, and he happily handed over the empty bottle.  


"You spilled _all_ of it? Amazing," Peter said. His eyes were on the rear view, watching for marked cars. "Walter, put something over the box! We're five minutes from home and I refuse to count backwards for anyone else tonight." Walter obediently began to remove his overcoat but his seatbelt was in the way.  


Five seconds later the red and blue lights started flashing (out of _nowhere,_ dammit) and Peter smacked the steering wheel and muttered something filthy. When the officer strode over and leaned against the driver's side door, Peter was contemplating just peeling out and letting Broyles make amends later.  


"The gentleman in back isn't wearing his seatbelt," the cop said, his elbow leaning dangerously into Peter's space. Peter's eyes flickered darkly.  


"As long as he's still in his straightjacket, officer, I think we'll be safe," he said politely.  


"Oh hey," the cop said, peering into the back where Walter was peeking under the overcoat at his prized smoking brick, "dry ice!"

 

 

Astrid had beaten them home by such a wide margin that she'd already put up most of the decorations by the time Peter barreled through the front door, shedding his coat and throwing it on the rack. He pointed at her, up on her chair, hanging spider-webbing in the living room.  


"As soon as I'm in costume, we're drinking," he said, and he grabbed the banister and bounded up the stairs. 

Walter was next, and then Olivia, closing the door behind them. Astrid jumped down from the chair to take the dry ice from him.  


"What's left to do?" Olivia asked her.  


"Apples need washing," Astrid said. Olivia went off to the kitchen and Astrid put Walter's dry ice on the desk in the foyer. It was only when she turned around that Walter noticed her wings, flattened on her back, brown.  


"Ascot! You're a butterfly!" he said.  


"Well," she said, "right _now_ I'm a moth. But..." She twirled around, pulled a string at her back and her wings were pulled together, meeting behind her to reveal their vivid blue undersides. " _Lycaeides melissa samuelis,_ " she said proudly. She twirled again for good measure. "How do you like it?"  


"It's magnificent," Walter said. His slow-spreading smile was wistful and a little nostalgic. "It reminds me of something I can't remember."   


"It's all right, Walter," she said. "It'll come to you." After a short, deep-thinking pause Walter nodded, like some conversation in his head had ended. "I have to get ready!" he cried. Astrid patted his chest.

"Go get 'em," she said, and he stumped up the stairs humming Carmen.

 

 

When Peter came back downstairs Astrid was dipping candy apples in the kitchen and Olivia was nowhere to be found.  


"Nice," Astrid said, seeing his costume. She swirled another apple in the saucepan. "Olivia's out on the porch. I think she needed a breather."  


"That's great," Peter said, opening the fridge and finding to his delight that his father had chosen tolerable beer, "but you and I had a deal." He slid into a seat at the butcher-block counter and put two bottles of cider in front of him. "Put those apples down and...actually, bring two of those over here."  


Astrid grinned and handed him one right off the cookie sheet, still faintly warm.   


"Thanks for not letting Walter do these," Peter said, waving his apple. He found the bottle opener in a drawer by his hip and cracked the ciders open.  


"You're welcome," she said, taking a seat across from him. She tipped the neck of her bottle toward him, and he held up the apple instead.  


"To you, Astrid," he said, serious but smiling. He tapped the rim of her cider with the red, round shell and looked across the counter at her. "I know what you do, for him. And I know what you do for me, and for Olivia. You are us," he told her, and from the look on her face she knew that all his thanks were justified but appreciated nonetheless. "And if I didn't know you had a fantastic life outside of this, I'd tell you to move in, too."  


"Thanks," she said, accepting the toast to herself with a gracious drink. Then they splintered and cracked their way through two beautifully-coated Jonagolds.

 

 

Peter gave Olivia half an hour on the porch before he went out to find her. That translated to one cider and two candy apples with Astrid and three rounds of trying to catch donut holes with his mouth as they dangled from a yardstick while Walter kept body-checking him and going for the jelly-filleds.   


Fresh beer in hand, Peter walked out through the front door. He took a deep breath of cool, pungent air and looked out over the street. It was late enough that most of the young trick-or-treaters had come and gone already, probably given handfuls of those horrible orange circus peanuts (Walter's choice) by whoever was closest to the front door when the doorbell rang. But it was still Halloween, and the weather was cooperating with a leaf-rattling wind and some perfect fast-moving clouds over the moon. 

Olivia was on the step next to the Jack-o-Lantern they'd carved with a laser. It looked horrible and no one could tell what the design was supposed to be, but at least it held together after all the pieces they'd hacked out. Peter could see she'd brought a quilt out and bundled herself into a short little cat sarcophagus. She had a cider in her hand, but it was only half-gone. The once-over she gave his costume was less surprised than he'd expected.  


"So. Data, huh?" she said. "Did that get a lot of chicks at the conventions?" As if she couldn't imagine any other reason he'd wear gold face paint and a ridiculously clingy outfit.  


"Cute," he said. "And no."  


"So no conventions, then? Or just no chicks?"  


Peter leaned against a post, half-bitter but still amused. "Actually," he said, "I consider it to be more personally significant." Olivia sipped her cider and watched the moon, expecting him to go on. When he didn't, she turned restlessly on the stairs and looked up at him.  


"Okay," she said, "I'm biting." Peter grinned and tipped himself down the first porch stair to sit almost beside her, one step removed. Clusters of slutty cheerleaders, slutty nurses and slutty vampires skipped down the road, followed by one lingering Hilary Clinton and a cardboard box mech.  


"Things were weird for me growing up," Peter said. "Not like, weird shoes and hand-me-down sweaters weird, but..." Peter pulled a long swig from his bottle. He was trying to figure out how to say this without coming off like a jerk, but that was ironically half of what he was trying to explain. "You know how it's hard for you to go to the supermarket, or ride the T, or do almost anything involving other people without feeling-because you know what you know-that your life is so far removed from their lives that you might as well be in a different universe? Like you can't _really_ talk to anyone because there's a fundamental understanding you don't share with almost anyone else on the planet?"  


Olivia gave him a small nod. She hadn't quite put words to that isolation, yet, but she understood it very well.  


"So," Peter continued, dipping his head to stare at the painted wood steps, "imagine that you're in first grade and all the six-year-olds are reading Dick and Jane and you're reading Bertrand Russell. Imagine that you have the answer so many times that the teacher stops calling on you, and the kids can't understand why you don't like eating paste, and between those two things nobody actually speaks to you at school. My whole childhood, I felt like an alien." He scuffed his feet on the step, kicking off a bit of deep red leaf."So imagine you see on TV, one night, when you're stuck in bed and breathing is a chore, this golden robot with all the answers who can't understand how everyone else is able to act so perfectly _human_."

"You're no robot, Peter," Olivia said. The wind had tugged some of her hair free from her blanket, and she pulled it back behind her ears.  


"Yeah," he said ruefully. "I know." He paused and looked her over. She was still wearing her suit. "Are you really just going to be an FBI agent?" he asked. She cocked her head at him.  


"I don't like face paint," she said.  


"It's Halloween," he said. "You _must_ have had a favorite costume when you were little."  


Olivia rolled her bottle between her fingers. "Sure I did," she said.  


"So?" he said. "There's still time. Besides, tomorrow you _have_ to be an FBI agent."  


She thought about that. Then she upended her bottle against her mouth. When the cider was gone she stood up. "Okay," she said, gathering the quilt into her arms. "I'm going to need your jacket." 

 

 

Ten minutes later, Olivia evaluated herself in the mirror.  


Black pants, black tank, black boots, black belt.  


Peter's black leather jacket.  


Black socks on her hands with the toes and heels cut out for her fingers and thumbs.  


Her gun and belt holster on the outside, the clip and live round sitting benignly on Peter's dresser.  


Not exactly right, but then again she'd never gotten it perfect.

 

 

When she came down the stairs, they were all waiting around a steel tub of water.  


"See," Peter said, "I told you she would."  


"Olivia! It's time to bob for apples," Walter said, and Olivia realized that some time in the last hour he'd painted a beard on his face with what looked like mascara. Of course, the only mascara in the house was hers, so...  


"Walter," she started, but before she could go on, Peter was pulling her arm.  


"You and me," he said.  


"No way," Astrid said. "Ladies first, guys with lots of makeup second. I'm not getting that-" she swished a hand at Walter's painted beard "-or that-" and at Peter's face "-all over me."  


"By all means, then," Peter said, "ladies first. Single elimination." He spilled the apples into the tub and the women got on their knees. Peter could see their competitive streaks igniting like the shuttle launch.

"Hands behind your backs!" Peter said. Olivia started grinning in spite of herself. 

When Peter said _go,_ Walter crouched with his fists out, cheering Astrid like a racehorse while Peter stayed impartial. Astrid's reluctance to fully immerse her head was no match for Olivia's whatever-it-took strategy. She splashed around like a blonde otter until she managed to trap an apple at the bottom of the tub and get her teeth into it. When she pulled her head out, water cascaded off her like a river over a rock, pushing a film of loose, wet hair over her face.  


Her eyes were pressed shut but she was laughing as she sat blindly back from the basin. She took the apple from her mouth but before she could get the hair out of her eyes Peter was peeling it back for her, laughing as she got her breath back and forgetting to drop his hand from the side of her face. He could not have cared less about the water dripping off his leather jacket. There was a moment when she forgot to look away, seeing something so happy in his eyes that she didn't want to separate from it.  


Astrid reached immediately for a hand towel and dried her face. "I think the donuts were more my speed," she said. Walter was already kneeling at the opposite side of the tub.  


"Bishop versus Bishop!" he said. "Father versus son!" Peter stepped back from Olivia.  


"How many ciders have you had, Walter?" Peter said.  


"A bushel and a peck," Walter answered musically.  


"This will either be very good," Peter said, rubbing his hands together as he knelt next to his father, "or tragically dangerous."  


And Walter cheated (of course) andhe was so obvious about it that Peter felt his hand in the tub, fishing around for an apple. But Peter said nothing and neither did anyone else because Walter was so thrilled to win, and besides, Olivia was pretty much guaranteed to kick his ass in the final round whether he cheated or not. Which she did.

 

 

By midnight Astrid had gone, presumably to another party that would last hours longer. Walter was scrubbing mascara off his face in the kitchen like he hadn't imagined it would be so difficult to remove. Olivia had remover, but she'd be damned if he was going to get it after he'd used her makeup as a Sharpie. She headed upstairs to the room that had become hers. Peter followed her up, followed her to her door but didn't go any further.  


"Good Halloween?" he said gently. She stopped at her bed and turned to him. He was slightly pinker than gold in her doorway, his face paint smeared and mostly gone already.  


"Yeah," she said.  


"Good. I'm gonna hit the shower for forty-five minutes," he said, gesturing to his face, "so if you want to get in there first..."  


"I'm all set," she said. "And I hid the makeup remover in your sock drawer, if you want. Just don't give it to Walter. He needs to learn a lesson." Peter's eyebrows arched. He could still hear Walter muttering from downstairs about Dawn being able to degrease wildlife but being utterly useless in this capacity.

"Wow. Remind me not to piss you off." 

Olivia smiled at him like she agreed, and he stepped back out into the hall. 

"Goodnight," he said, "my _very_ Mad Max."

 

 

Astrid's phone vibrated in her pocket. She might not have answered if she'd checked the called ID before picking up, but she ducked out into the hall of her friend's apartment building and opened the phone without thinking.  


"Hey," she said, and it was Walter's tired voice that came back at her.  


"Airstrip?"  


"Walter," she said, caught between concern and apprehension. "What's going on?"  


"Thank goodness I've finally got the right number. You wouldn't believe how many A. Farnsworths live in the greater metropolitan area."  


"Walter."  


"Oh. Yes." He focused. "I wanted to tell you...I remembered."  


"What did you remember?"  


"The butterfly moth. I remembered where I should remember it from," he said again, "and I wanted to tell you."  


Astrid smiled silently on the line. "Thank you, Walter. Happy Halloween."  


"Happy Halloween, Agent Farnsworth!" The phone clicked off, and in the middle of the sweet, rosy feeling the conversation had given her, she wondered if when he'd looked up her name he'd searched A for Astrid or A for Agent.

  
  



	15. November: Peter Shows Off

# November

  


### Peter Shows Off

Peter and Olivia were on the couch, and Walter was asleep in Peter's room: this was how it worked when they knew they'd be up all night. Peter had rented more Nova videos (real videos, true relics) from the library, and brought home a six-pack of beer despite Walter's admonitions not to to drink after sessions. They had their feet up on the coffee table, ignoring the strain on their knees, and Peter skipped through the opening credits of _The Mystery of the Megavolcano_ while Olivia found the best position for her head against his shoulder. She felt surprisingly good for having been experimented on.

Used to be, she'd felt alone when the electrodes had come off. Nobody had really understood how it was, getting out of the chair different than she'd gone in. But now, Peter was picking up speed of his own in the chair. He could understand what she was going through. They could commiserate; bond; grow _weird_ together. It was more like a game and less like an uncertain march towards the destruction of their universe.

With NOVA paused on the screen and the couch dipping genially beneath their weight, she felt a homeyness that filled a vacuum inside her. Her life here was so different from the pristine conditions of her vacant apartment. There was a coffeemaker and mismatched potholders and chips in a few of their favorite mugs. They argued, and while sometimes it was about the proper megadoses of unregulated drugs, sometimes it was about who was going to have to put their boots on and go to the store. They rented movies and ordered pizza and got roll-called for Walter's blue corn muffins at six-thirty a.m., and sometimes she even forgot the real reason she was there.

Suddenly, Olivia was afraid of the end. She didn't want to go back.

"You okay?" Peter asked.

She was staring at him, Olivia realized. "Yeah," she said.

"You know," Peter said, concerned, "you don't have to do anything you don't want to do." His hand tipped her chin as his eyebrows furrowed slightly. Olivia blinked: he couldn't have known her thoughts, but sometimes he made her wonder. "It was true when I said it the first time, and it'll be true no matter what."

Olivia looked at him squarely. Before the thing she was feeling became too tender and uncomfortable to feel, she thought, _I'm glad I'm here._ And then she leaned forward to grab the remote.

"I was promised some Megavolcanoes," she said, breaking the moment. But Peter reached out for her free hand. He took a breath, like he was preparing for something.

"I'm glad you're here, too," he said, and waited for her to understand what he'd just shown her.

Olivia stared hard at the television, the television on which NOVA was _still_ paused and there was really nothing to stare at. She stared for almost a full minute, contemplating.

"Oh, this is _so_ not good," she said finally.

Peter smiled. "You're not going to get jealous, are you?"


	16. November: White Sneakers

### White Sneakers

It was a nice day to be outside: sunny, clear and cold. The case was fairly standard: heavy on the gore, heavy on the weird, and hold the sanity, please. Peter had entrails on a stick. Astrid had entrails in a bag. Walter had entrails on a tongue depressor, dangerously close to his mouth.

"I smell isoamyl acetate," he said.

"You're bananas, Walter," Peter said, but only Walter got the joke.

Olivia wanted nothing to do with entrails, and as such she was taking a break in the front seat of the SUV, coffee in hand and door open to watch the show. Her sneakers, an allowance from Broyles for the pain in her knees, rested on the runner as she watched the Bishops mill around, joking the way people probably shouldn't be able to joke over human (or mostly-human) remains. She got lost in their motions and low babble, staring fuzzily toward the splatter patterns on the asphalt until Peter's blurry shape jogged up to her.

"Hey," he said. He looked so much less tired than she felt that Olivia wondered how it were possible they were taking the same drugs. "Walter found something he's calling a venemous urostyle, and I thought you might want to watch him painfully try to explain what that means to the rent-a-cops."

Olivia smiled a little. Peter squinted like he couldn't see her clearly through the coffee steam.

"How're you doing?" he asked, though experience had taught him she'd never be anything but 'fine.'

"Fine." She ducked her head to break eye contact because she didn't have the energy for focus.

"More coffee? I'll go," he offered. "I've gotten my daily allowance of Vitamin D-for-duodenum today."

"No. Thanks," she said, slowly rotating her paper cup in her hands to find new warm spots. She looked up. He was hovering. "Think you can get Walter to wrap it up anytime soon?"

"I'll work on him," he said. He studied her another moment and then he jogged off the way he'd come.

 

 

Olivia could tell a stall tactic from a mile away, and the Monopoly game Peter proposed when they got back to the lab was textbook. Somehow he managed to statistically balance the game so that no matter how many times they went around the board, there didn't seem to be a net change in their finances. Every time she altered something, he balanced with something else: a hotel on Indiana for two houses on Atlantic.

"Is there a purpose to this or are you just showing off?" Olivia asked, two hours in. She'd gnawed down so many Red Vines that her jaw was starting to ache, and Walter's cacophonous dissection of the venomous urostyle was getting on her last nerve. "I'm not really a statistics person, so this would be the wrong way to impress me."

He glanced charmingly at her. "And what would be the right way to impress you?"

"Get me out of this lab and make a pizza appear. With onions. And those little hot peppers."

"Onions _and_ hot peppers? Kind of pushing your luck, aren't you?" He gathered up a pile of Airhead wrappers in his fist and lurched stiffly over to the trash can, stretching his legs as he went. His chair looked harder than it had two hours ago. He didn't have the heart to make himself sit again.

"I wouldn't be impressed with just onions."

"No, I imagine you wouldn't." He smiled at her. She smiled back. It was a nice, simple trade and he could have sustained it a while longer if Walter hadn't come up behind him.

"Peter," he said, wrestling with his overcoat, "Astrid has agreed to take me home." Peter peered around him at Astrid, who was trying to impose order on a stack of papers in an accordion folder.

"She agreed, Walter? Or she was coerced?"

"Mr. Bartley's on the way home," Astrid said busily. "Walter's treat."

Olivia made a pitiable face from her corner. "Astrid gets Mr. Bartley's?" she whined.

"And you get the rarefied pleasure of my company," Peter said. He pulled the last of Walter's coat over his shoulder, fixing the collar where it folded the wrong way. He waved goodbye, watched them bustle out the door, and then everything went silent in their wake, except for Olivia.

"Please tell me we're not actually going to finish this game," she said hopefully.

"Hell, no," Peter said, making his way straight to Walter's desk and opening the drawers one by one. "I was honestly starting to think Walter was going to sleep here."

"What are you looking for?" Olivia asked. She was already out of her chair: immediately, insatiably curious. Peter closed the drawers and stepped back from the desk, his hands held in front of him like five-pronged divining rods.

"If I were something Walter used every day, where would I be?" He looked around the room like something might start glowing.

"Easy," Olivia said. Peter kept waiting for divine intervention, but Olivia went straight to Gene's pen and started prodding the hay with her shoe until she hit something. She dug her hand in cautiously and brought out a short stack of leatherbound notebooks. Brushing the hay dust off the covers revealed several large stains of indeterminate origin.

"Seriously?" Peter said as she handed him the books.

"Almost _too_ easy." Olivia eyed the hay. "Now I'm kind of wondering what I'd find if I kept looking."

"Don't, though," he said. "At least this was toward the front of the cow."

"Half the time."

Peter slapped the journals down on Walter's desk and started paging through. Olivia came up in front of him and tried to read Walter's cramped handwriting from upside-down. It was 4-point at best and for all she could tell he wrote backwards. There were occasional sketches of equipment and wirings, with printouts and graphs taped wherever they could fit.

"You plan to read that?" she said, done trying to decipher Walter's scratch. She perched on the edge of the desk and crossed her arms. "Why not just ask him what you want to know?"

"Because Walter's idea of 'objective' is a little skewed." He closed the book. "Do you think this'll smell less like cow by the time we get home?"

"No."

"Yeah," he conceded. He paused, his knuckles balancing him in a forward lean. "So, you said onions _and_ hot peppers?"

 

 

The car was chilly, but the pizza boxes burned Olivia's thighs.

At a red light she asked, "So what doyou hope to find in Walter's journals?"

He reached over and adjusted the tilt of the boxes, cardboard sliding quietly over her knees. "Smokey Bear says: only youcan prevent cheese slippage." His face was stern in the rear-view mirror, clouded with stoplight colors and headlight auras. "I'll tell you when I find it," he said.


	17. November: Notebooks

### Notebooks

Olivia woke up and it was dark: a disorientingly indistinguishable time before dawn. The mug on her nightstand smelled like ginger but was dry of tea, save for a film of honey. She had a feeling of the house not being asleep, of someone being awake, and she knew it was Peter. Even through the wall, and even though Walter was in there, sleeping, Peter's room felt empty next to hers.

She lay in bed, hearing the beeps and crushes of early garbage trucks, wishing she would fall back asleep but knowing she wouldn't, knowing she would inevitably be getting up but wanting to prolong the wait. She listened for Peter, waiting for the scrape of a chair or a creak of the floorboards, but there were no drifting comforts. It would have been easier to go back to sleep if he'd made any sound at all.

She knew he was downstairs, probably in the same position as she'd left him after they'd made scraps of the pizza: sitting at the table in another one of his sweaters that looked too thin to be warm. He'd have Walter's journals on the table next to the empty pizza boxes, and he'd have finished reading them hours ago but he'd still be studying every word, every figure, looking for something: that thing he'd tell her about when he found it.

Sure enough, when Olivia rounded the landing an hour later in her bare feet and pajamas, there he was. He had a cup of burnt-smelling coffee that was too big and too dark for the hour. The line in his forehead was deep, but with concentration or displeasure she couldn't tell.

"You're still up," she said, curled around the bottom newel. Peter had that caged-animal feeling about him that she didn't like to mess with.

"Yeah," he said, without looking up. He was stuck to the page he was reading. He got a few lines further and gave up, frowning into the page, then at her. Whatever he wanted to say, he already knew she wasn't going to like it.

"Find anything?"

"Other than the fact that Walter _really_ likes to write about our nonexistant sex life?"

"Is that so?" she said.

Peter rolled his eyes and shut the book. "Lots of sentences ending in, _'which was an opportunity for coitus, though it cannot be determined if coitus has occurred.'_ Lots and lots of sentences. You'd think we were animals in his personal zoo."

"Does it bother you?" she asked, approaching. He sat back in his chair, pawed his rough cheeks and sighed.

"No," he said. "If anything, it's as normal as he gets, which is reassuring."

"I'm not sure if it reassures _me._ " She arched over the table and slid the book out from under his fingers to leaf through the page corners, looking for juicy keywords.

"'Livia," he said. Olivia didn't stop looking through the pages because she'd glimpsed the word _'secretive'_ next to her name and she'd be damned if Walter were spying on her, but Peter's hand came up over her arm and held it still. 

"What," she said, warily.

"I think it might be time to stop."

"Stop what?" she said, withdrawing from Peter's papery nest to stand at the corner of the table. Peter held out one of the journals, then two, and even with his light touch the loose pages rattled, each sheet stiff with chemicals and Peach Nehi.

"I've been reading through these all night. For the blood, sweat and tears we're putting into this thing -- for what we're risking -- I mean, the 'results' are barely there." He let the books drop. 

"You're kidding," Olivia said.

"I'm not saying the experiment wasn't a good idea. And I'm definitely not saying that I don't like having you around." She looked up at him sharply, so sharply that he took liberties interpreting. "And if you're worried that this Very Brady Family Special is going to grind to a halt just because we're not plugging into an IV every-"

"I'm not worried about that," she said, flat and quick. "I'm not here because I want to play house with you and Walter. I'm here because I'm trying to use what I've been given, to help fix things."

"I'm not sure you should look at what Walter did to you as a gift, though I'm sure _he_ does."

"Regardless."

"No, not 'regardless,'" Peter said. "There's a cost to what we're doing, and according to Walter's notes, the benefit hasn't materialized."

"You can read minds."

"Only yours."

"You don't think that's significant?"

"It's a party trick."

"So you think we should just, what, sit back and watch holes being torn between universes when we're maybe the only people in a position to help?"

"That's not what I said. You knowthat's not what I mean."

"Then what _do_ you mean? You think someone else will step up if we step down? You think Walter has another list of names to run through?" At that second, Peter and Olivia held the same image in their heads: that list of Walter's preschool patients, lines drawn through almost every one. To Olivia, it meant responsibility, urgency, necessity: the group's burden slowly condensing over her un-blacked name. Peter, by contrast, sensed a felt-tipped marker hovering millimeters above Olivia's name: waiting. 

"'Livia." Peter repositioned himself, approaching from a literally different angle. "These drugs Walter's giving you: they're serious drugs, in stupidlybig doses. The way you were, today, at the crime scene...this stuff is wearing you down, big time. Maybe you can keep going for now, but it's going to catch up with you, and if we're not sure it's going to be worth it, then -- I mean, there are other things we can do with our lives."

"Other things?" she asked him. "You mean, other things we can do instead of saving the world?"

"No, I mean... Look." Doglike, he paced in upset circles in front of her. "Despite what you may think, or what I may have thought, we're not saving the world, here, okay?" His voice rose, more frustrated than anything else, and then he stepped close to her, looking her in the eyes while his hands went around her face, and Olivia was afraid he might be winding up to kiss her. "Maybe we wanted to, myself included," he said, "and we've tried, but whatever we're doing, it's not working. Read the journals. The data's all there. We're getting nowhere." Peter's palms pressed into her cheeks, his pinkies in the soft spots behind her ears and his thumbs at her temples. She could smell his breath: coffee, but also cloves and allspice, the leftover apple pie. Peter was tall and intimidating when he wanted to be, but Olivia was a force of her own.

"I'm not going nowhere," she said, straightening up. "I can do things now that I couldn't have imagined I could do. That I couldn't have imagined _existed_ , before Walter."

"Yeah, but _what_ things?" Peter's hands left her face to ground themselves on his hips, where they could grip bone tightly and not hurt anyone but himself. "See Over There? Great. And I can tell when you want an orange soda. Together, we fight crime." 

"This is just the beginning," Olivia said. "Walter said it might be slow."

"First of all, two months of megadosing on Walter's Special Sauce is _not_ the beginning. And second: Walter doesn't know. Walter can say a lot of things but the point is he's guessing: he has _no idea_ what's going to happen to you _._ " Peter raised a hand aimlessly to pull the hair at the back of his head.

"I'm not stopping," Olivia said. "I get what you think about this and I'm sorry you think it, but we need to keep going."

"How much longer do you think you have on those knees?" he asked. "Or the rest of you?"

The question confused Olivia.

"Pain is damage," Peter said, a little softer. "I see you hobbling around the crime scenes in those little sneakers and I can't help but think that this is only the damage we can see. What about the damage we can't? And if this is how the tests are leaving your body, how is it going to leave your _mind,_ because I'm feeling pretty attached to that part of you, lately." Peter sat down again and put his elbows on his knees, bracing. "You can't think you can keep doing this without consequences."

"I think 'consequences' are what we're _after_ , here," Olivia said. "It's a consequence of these drugs that we even have the _chance_ to save the world. We have an obligation to follow through." 

"We don't, though," he said. "We're not obligated. You're looking at this all wrong."

"I don't think I am." 

"Well, I think you're wrong."

"Why? Because I don't think the solution to all my failings is cutting loose?"

Peter lifted off his knees for a few seconds, stunned. "That..."

"What?"

"That's not fair," he said.

"The world isn't worth it to you, is what you mean," she said.

"Hey, _enough,"_ he said, sharp and loud, and she stopped talking but kept staring at him as if he'd insulted _her,_ and not the other way around. He got up and took a few steps away from her, from the table covered in the evidence of their non-progress. Olivia waited, watching him try to straighten the kinks out of his back. He didn't turn around when he spoke to her again: "What I'm saying is, if there's nothing we can do, we don't have to keep trying. And we don't have to feel guilty about that."

"You're wrong, Peter."

"I'm not." He headed deeper into the living room, wandering toward the couch in the dark. She followed him because the argument wasn't over, flipping on the lights as she went because it was the opposite of what it appeared he wanted. He settled in on one end and she sat alertly at the other, and it was far from the way they were accustomed to sitting on the couch together. Peter put a hand beside his hips in her direction, lessening the distance by a few subconscious inches. "Even if," he said. "Even if we do it. Get all your abilities back; get a few new ones, even." He looked over at her. "This thing is quantum science. It's _universes._ For us to think that anything we could possibly do would be even-" he stopped, half-laughing for a moment "-a drop in the bucket... I mean, _that's_ selfish. _That's_ pride."

"We have to try," she said quietly.

"And then what? Let's say you manage to repair the fabric of this universe with your magical powers. You think you can save the other one, too? Has it occurred to you that you might have the blood of That Side on your hands for the rest of your life? Think about that: my mother. Your other mother. Your other _you_. Billions of people who might not be exactly who we are but who feel exactly the same way about having their entire universe wiped away."

There was nothing Olivia could say to that. It wasn't like she hadn't considered it, but she didn't think anyone could ever have anything to say to something like that.

"And let's go even further: let's say you _can_ save them both," Peter went on. "Who's to say it's only our universes involved in this thing? It might be three or four or five _million_ universes, all told, and is that still your job? Are you responsible for all that?"

Olivia bit her lip.

"At what point do we get to stop arguing with physics and just live our lives?" He knew the entreaty was too oblivious-sounding, too blindly feel-good to appeal to Olivia's sensibilities. He didn't know how to get her to understand what he had come to see: that there might be smaller universes more worth their attention, for as long as they lasted. Universes of just a few.

Olivia stared at him for a long time, choosing her words, and it came down to one: "Determinist."

Peter laughed -- what else could he do? -- but it was short-lived and sad. He hadn't expected to be able to change her mind. She liked her three r's too much: risk, rush, responsibility (perhaps the last one most of all). He watched the way she sat on the edge of the couch, straight and proud, and wished there was a way to make her understand that their universe, and maybe all of them, was a selfish place that would eat her alive and not even remember.

Conceding, Peter drew his outstretched hand back to his knee. For a while he watched the floor: the patterns in the rug, the library DVD cases scattered around the television. His eyes were burning from hours of reading, and possibly from his frustration with the idea that he might lose Olivia piecemeal for nothing but false hope.

When he looked over to the other side of the couch again, Olivia was gone, and he hadn't heard her go.


	18. November: Olivia's First Shocks

### Olivia's First Shocks

"We're starting _slow_ on this, right?" Peter asked, because he remembered Olivia's first time with the drugs and it was not an experience he wanted to repeat just because Walter had decided to add electric shocks to her roster.

"Oh, quite," Walter said, affixing the sticky electrodes to Olivia's forehead. Astrid placed heat and smoke sensors for remote monitoring. Olivia was nervous, blinking and looking anywhere but at Walter's floating hands.

"It's fine, Peter," she said, as her hands clenched and unclenched around the armrests. He wanted to put a hand out for her to squeeze, but she'd never in a million years take it. Not while she was actually scared.

 

 

The drugs went in smoothly, as usual, and the Walternator -- which Peter had made himself and tested in every way he knew how -- worked perfectly. After the first two rounds of shocks, Olivia's brain waves started making pretty pictures, and the Bishops started watching the monitors so intently that when the first paperclip hit Peter's shoulder, he brushed it off without thinking, like it was normal for something to have fallen onto his shoulder in the lab.

The second paperclip, though, Peter noticed because it didn't hit him: it wormed through his hair in a crawly way that made him shudder and pat his head down. When his fingers found a paperclip and not a beetle or spider, he was confused. He thought illogically that perhaps it'd been _thrown_ at him, and turned around to check. He didn't turn back.

"Walter," he said, still looking behind them. "You ever see _this_ before?"

They stared into the veil of small implements: mostly paperclips and tacks with the occasional pencil or pen. It was almost hard to see, a wall of things where you wouldn't expect things to be. It just hung there, a motionless metallic haze that curved up and around them like they were inside a grey balloon. If Olivia was a nucleus, this was her impossibly crowded electron cloud.

"This doesn't quite fit the firestarter profile, does it,” Peter said.

Walter had an odd look. "Tastes change, I suppose," he said. He took an errant airborne tack in the face as they tried to decide what to do about the new development, and pinprick of blood formed over his eyebrow.

"Get out," Peter said.

"Absolutely not," Walter said.

"Absolutely _yes,_ " Peter countered, already tilting the monitors so he could see them all himself.

"Out of the question," Walter said. "This is a critical interval; she cannot be left unattended." Like Peter didn't know that. Like Peter didn't know the entire procedure, start to finish. Like he hadn't stayed up nights in a row trying to suss out every risk, every place it could go wrong.

"I'll stay," he said, because putting himself in bizarre situations and trusting his genius to get him out was practically his M.O..

A lone stapler wobbled by, on its way to join the cloud. Walter tracked it with his eyes as it passed between their faces. Peter could imagine what he was thinking: that a stapler was much bigger, much _heavier_ than a tack. Walter touched the bloody pinprick on his forehead. There was a moment more of silence and then, somewhere behind them, a metal office chair started to shift quietly against the linoleum.

"Walter,” Peter said, with decorum, “I get that you're not afraid of anything, anywhere, for any reason, but why don't you wait outside." Walter gave in with a nod. Peter kept his eyes on the hollow sphere of office supplies as Walter backed through them, parting the curtain of debris cautiously. After a few seconds, the door to the lab shut and Walter was gone, and then Peter actually had to think of a plan. He figured the safest thing was to wake Olivia, to get her up, because even if it did nothing to stop her from turning the lab into a snow globe, he could get the hell out after she was safely awake.

Gently and quickly as he could, he flipped switches and cut IVs, holding out faint hope that she'd open her eyes and the metal would drop and they could go home and not try any of this again without three inches of bulletproof glass in the way. He started doing what he usually did when he was nervous: talk.

"All right, sweetheart, come on," he said, less to Olivia and more to the machine that was easing the liquid contents of a bag labeled 'Rise & Shine' into her arm. He didn't know why Astrid's handwriting had to be so eternally cheerful.

 

 

When she woke up, Olivia's displeasure was imminent as an elephant wearing crampons in a roomful of babies. She tried to focus on him with pupils the size of Saturn.

"Hey now," he said, trying to show her how relaxed he wished he were. "You're okay. You're okay. It's all right." A pen hit him in the back: just a tap. He jumped.

"Peter," Olivia said, turning her head to test her neck. " _Ow_." She didn't sound so much hurt as she did resentful. A light dusting of paperclips rained on his shoulders, driven by more than just gravity.

"'Livia," Peter started. He was confused. She was awake, and that was supposed to have solved things. Maybe she wasn't awake enough. Maybe the drugs were still hard at work on her, strong enough to warp reality. As if on cue, the cloud rippled slightly: a disturbed sheet of waiting projectiles.

_Great._

Peter watched the monitor countdowns. Minutes left until he could safely leave her. He tried to decide whether it would be better or worse to undo her restraints: she might feel less threatened, but she'd have four more ways to hurt him.

" _Peter,_ " she growled, pleading.

Peter saw Walter's face pressed to the window of the lab door, watching him with a parental sort of anguish, and he reached for the buckles.

 

 

Right up to the moment the mug hit him in the back, Peter didn't think Olivia would _actually_ hurt him. He'd been encouraged by her stillness after he'd unbuckled her left side restraints: no kicking, no swinging at him. He'd been so encouraged that he'd undone them all, freeing her completely, and when she'd tried to get up he had helped her by slipping the needles out from under her skin so they wouldn't pull. She'd looked up at him as he'd peeled the electrodes off her body and seemed grateful. Then he'd felt the mug between his shoulders: a shot that, just a foot higher, might have left him unconscious on the ground. A pen shot across the room in the other direction, and he understood that she wasn't aiming for him _per se_ , but that he might be standing in the middle of an inadvertent firing range.

Peter recovered his breath and tried to remember how many more heavy things were hovering behind him -- how many might be sharp, or heavy -- and came up with _too many_. So he exhaled hard, grabbed Olivia tight and held on, not to comfort her but because she was the center, the safest place to be in her storm.

"'Livia, it's me," he said. "It's me." He moved her in an awkward, feet-shuffling circle-in-place, trying to never be exposed in one direction for too long and hoping it wouldn't be long before the drugs cleared her system.

When he had her turned away from the lab door, Peter looked up helplessly over her shoulder for Walter, hoping for some lifeline to be thrown, although he didn't know what Walter could possibly have for him through a door. True to his worry, Walter's drawn face in the window was all he got. Things were starting to fly past his head at a rapid pace. Most were un-alarmingly small, but some...

"Hey, sweetheart, come on, stop this," he continued, turning away from the door again.

"Peter," Olivia mumbled. His name was the only thing she seemed interested in saying. Her tone was altered, more miserable now, but that wasn't changing anything. A pencil holder shattered against the wall somewhere behind him. Peter started to wonder how long this was going to last, and if he should make a run for it despite the danger to both of them. _Help_ , he thought, like it was a joke he was telling himself. Something clipped him painfully on the hip, probably a hole punch. He didn't know why they even kepthole punches in the lab, but they wouldn't anymore, after today.

He talked to her, steadily as he could, and kept talking mindlessly for a few minutes until he tripped over a new word, one he hadn't thought he'd meant to say, and then another one after that, and then he found he had the most compelling urge to sing them. Maybe it was a consequence of his desperation for a remedy -- any remedy -- that he _did_ sing them. He knew he should feel more ridiculous about it, but he had trust in his brain, and in desperate times he let it call the shots and didn't ask questions. He shut his eyes and he sang and he shuffled around in his stationary orbit with her, letting the occasional object ping him and hoping the bad ones would miss. He'd lost count of their rotations by the time he noticed that he wasn't hearing things hit the ground in the background anymore.

He opened his eyes, just to slits, and peered out into the lab. Things looked normal. The ground was covered with a fine sheen of debris, but the air was clear. Olivia's brain-wave monitor, the only one he'd left attached, was as plain as he could ask for. He turned Olivia around so he could see Walter over her shoulder again, to show him that things were all right. He was afraid to stop singing. Walter would have to settle for a thumbs-up.

When Walter came into sight, he was mouthing words at Peter with a benevolent look on his face. Peter smiled at the praise he couldn't hear. He paused his circular movement for a moment to try and pick out a pleased word or two from Walter's lips: words he felt he deserved. And as he concentrated on the shapes of Walter's mouth Peter realized that his own mouth was making the same shapes. Same words. And Peter was sure that if he were outside with Walter, he wouldn't hear him speaking, he'd hear him singing.


	19. November: The Leonids

### The Leonids

Peter avoided eye contact as his father re-entered the lab. He let Walter take her, let him lift Olivia's weak-legged weight off his shoulders, and then he left the room.

He stood out in the hall, alone. The hallways of academic buildings were familiar enough to him to let him think, but he didn't want to think. He didn't want to invite any more of anyone else _in_. Walter came out after a few minutes. He wandered up, stopped short by Peter's radiant unease.

"You heard _me_ ," Walter said. He was tamping down the pride and awe.

"Yeah. Apparently." Peter stepped back against the wall and hoped Walter wouldn't advance. He didn't want to engage Walter, or anyone else. His brain was swimming in what was probably bits of Walter and pieces of Olivia, so, no more, thanks. "Walter, I-"

"She's asking for you," Walter said, talking over him. Maybe to keep him from saying he didn't want to talk about it, or maybe to show him that he wasn't being asked to talk about it. Just to come back. 

Peter tried to exhale the pressure in his head and ignore the ache of what was likely bruised bone in his back. He knew none of the object-throwing and pain-making had been Olivia's fault. At least, none of it had been her _intention._ Rather, it hadn't been her _conscious intention_. Or...something. Truthfully he didn't know how or why, at all. What he _did_ know was that Olivia was the one they'd poked and shocked tonight, and that she still deserved his support because that was what they did for each other. But Peter couldn't bring himself to go back into the lab. He just couldn't. 

"Walter," he said, "I need to go. Out. For a while." He wanted to be clear; he wasn't asking to be followed or rescued. "Tell her...I'll see her tonight." He didn't ask Walter to tell her he was sorry for running away: that was something he'd do in person, later, when he felt solid-state again.

Walter wrung his hands.

"I'll be back," Peter promised, in case Walter still worried that, one day, he wouldn't be.

 

 

Peter drove. Alone. Always alone, when he came out like this. 

In the beginning there was a lot of the pink-sky-black-land that only seemed to happen in winter; he knew he was passing little towns that lit up the clouds, but he never saw them. Small radio stations proliferated like mice in a void of hawks. They were good, and he didn't have to work hard to find something that kept his mind off himself. He clicked around out of restlessness, but not because he was tired of listening.

Off-ramps became rare, connectors rarer. He was heartened, when he saw one, that the thought of taking it and leaving everything behind was less urgent than the last time he'd come out this far. He was past the point where something like that would be plausible; he knew he'd end up back at the house, with his people. Knew for sure.

He cared about them, about their situation, in a way that he would have called _too much,_ if it weren't him doing the caring. He wouldn't have thought himself capable, but there it was. He thought it might be what having kids was like, without the diapers, and it was this thought that came back to him (two songs later) as a thought he probably should have had months ago: that it must have been a burden on his father to have kept him, maybe in more ways than it wasn't.

Peter clicked through the radio stations, barely letting the music come in before moving on, trying to avoid the comet tail of spectacularly depressing implications that would follow a thought like that. Despite his efforts he began to understand that there had possibly been reasons -- real ones, legitimate ones -- for Walter being institutionalized that had nothing to do with the kind of insanity Peter'd assumed, but rather with the kind of insanity he was feeling right now: the kind that came from seeing how impossibly little control he had over the things most important to him, from feeling how close to unraveling his world was and how useless he was to fix it.

He realized that sometimes he felt himself making the same worried face he'd seen on Walter at St. Clair's, behind the beard before Walter'd shaved it. He realized that he and his father were not so far apart, not so different, except that one had tried to protect the other from a lifetime of nights awake, thinking thoughts like these. If something happened, now, to Peter's weird little family that were in some way his own fault -- something he couldn't explain to anyone while retaining any semblance of sanity -- how long would it take _him_ to learn to like the taste of St. Clair's pudding?

Peter's mind approached, but couldn't integrate, the idea of Walter being sane and good -- of Walter _having been_ sane and good for eighteen years, subsisting on those goddamn pudding cups while Peter was using that time to put anything and everything between them -- and went blank, clearing the cache entirely in favor of the glowing text on a highway sign and the ambient something-or-other on the station he'd forgotten to change.

Peter drove.

 

 

Three and half hours out, the sky was black and the pink clouds had gone the way of the dodo. There were no other cars on the road, which was unusual. He was tempted to pull over and just look up, and he thought, why not? So he pulled the car onto the shoulder, tires buzzing over the grooved asphalt, and killed the engine.

The interior seemed louder after the engine noise was gone. For a minute he let the car sit with its headlights on, considering the stupidity of being parked, dark, on the highway, but then he thought about the stupid things he did every day in the lab and he killed the headlights too, just to see how dark it really was. 

He got out of the car and wandered a few yards ahead. The silence was full of something that wasn't sound but felt loud. He looked out on the miles of trees and more-than-that of stars, and thought that three years ago it would have felt desperately compelling to taste aloneness again. Now it felt bittersweet, like visiting a room he used to live in. He saw the Milky Way, looking more like powdered milk than a smooth pour, and felt his phone buzz in his pocket. It wasn't Olivia, because she didn't call him when he went out to be alone, but he wished it were. He wanted to tell her things. _What_ things, he wasn't sure, but he wanted to talk and hear her talk back.

He experienced the novelty feeling of being too far away from something.

Looking up one last time, he saw something wonderful.

 

 

"Hey," he whispered. 

Olivia blinked up at him from where she'd fallen asleep on the couch. Had she been waiting for him, or had she just been unwilling to do the stairs with her aching knees? She would have been too proud to ask Walter to help her.

"I'm up," she said reflexively, like he was going to hand her her gun and badge and tell her to get in the car.

"No, no, no," he said. "Relax." He sat down next to her. She was covered in blankets, some of which he knew had come from the upstairs closet, and he was warm at the thought of Walter fussing over her.

"What is it?" she asked. The VCR clock read 5:07am, and it wasn't strange that he was home this late but he didn't usually wake her when he got back.

"How're you feeling?" He pulled up the edge of a quilt up from where it had slipped off her shoulder. She shrugged. "I want you to see something," he said, looking back over his shoulder at the front door. He waited while she considered: it was cold outside and she was cozy and half-asleep. But finally she shifted forward on the couch. He held the blankets while she got her feet under her, and when she was up he put them back over her shoulders. He led her out into an unusually dark night, the moon already set and the Boston skyscrapers cooperatively dark.

"Are we going somewhere?" she asked. The car was parked on a weird diagonal. Walking ahead of her, he reached into the open driver's side window, turning the peripherals on. The seat belt warning dinged for a few seconds before giving up.

"No," he said. She shuffled over to him, following the trail of his breath in the air. "Here. Just..." he took her shoulders and guided her to the side of the car so she could lean against it. The way he'd parked, she was pointed in the right direction. "Look up."

She did. Putting his head next to hers to gain her line of sight, he pointed at a constellation she recognized but couldn't name. "There. Keep watching." Then the top half of him disappeared into the car again, and she heard radio static. Peter tuned slowly, trawling the bottom of the FMs for several minutes, listening until he found it, and then he turned it up so she could hear. He backed out of the car window to see her smiling.

"No _way_ ," she said, face to the sky.

"It's the Leonids."

She looked over at him and her delighted expression made his night. "Meteor- meteorites? Meteors?" she said, unusually cautious of not knowing.

"Meteors. Unless one hits us; then it's a meteorite. On the bright side, whichever one of us it doesn'thit gets to name the meteorite." Olivia grinned and lay back against the car again, watching the lights streak. Between fits of static, the radio was producing hollow whines and hisses, and she tilted her head toward the open window.

"Is that them?" she asked.

Peter dove back into the car. "Hold on. I had them better on the way home," she barely heard him say. She waited while he messed with the dials again, but when he emerged this time it was to a clear, ethereal resonance, like a tableful of people making wine glasses sing. "There it is," he said proudly. "That's them."

Olivia didn't ask how it worked. She didn't say anything for a while. Her smile dropped but she didn't ask to go back inside. Peter braced himself on the door frame and watched with her, listening to the meteors howl quietly between blips of reflected stations.

"Steal this trick from a NOVA I haven't seen yet?" she asked finally.

"Nope. This is authentic Bishop know-how," he said. "That's what you get for-" _(Christ almighty, he almost said dating_ ) "-cohabiting with the son of a scientist."

"I guess." She was smiling in that way that looked like she wasn't. He hoped it meant she was happy, that she'd found a way to pack away the day's events in her head. But five minutes of silence later she said his name and he knew she hadn't been able to stop thinking about it, either.

"I'm sorry about today," she said, looking firmly up and away from him. He thought about what to say in return. _All in the name of progress? No harm done? Not your fault?_

"Me, too," he chose.

 

 

They watched until daybreak, which coincided with the cold breaching the soles of her slippers. As he walked her inside he could feel his back stiffening up, a byproduct of his injuries and hours of driving.

"I forgot to mention," he said, as she worked her way up the front steps, "the union called." He waited for her to turn to him and repeat, _the union?_ with that skeptical look he liked so much. "Lab Rats Local 512. Tomorrow's a mandatory holiday."

"Tomorrow, huh?"

"Possibly also the day after tomorrow."

"I received no notification."

"Well. It's not a very well organized union. Mostly rats, mice, us." That made her smile, for real. He opened the door for her and she brushed past him, three feet wide with all her blankets.

"Remind me to run for secretary," she said. She was playing with him, and for whatever reason, it cut strings in Peter's head: let him step back into ordinary time, let him stop worrying and come home.

"Oh, absolutely," he said, and closed the door behind them.


	20. December: World's Most Unconscious Bodyguard

# December

  
  


### World's Most Unconscious Bodyguard

After Olivia's reaction to the shocks, two things had happened: 1) Walter had taken a lesson and promised to step the current in the Walternator _way_ down, and, 2) he and Astrid had sketched out plans for the New Room, wherein Walter wouldn't need to back off the amperage because there'd be little Olivia could do to him through concrete and three inches of plexiglass. But the tests had continued, and even with sparing use of the Walternator, Walter had found ways to push limits.

So, with all the limit-pushing, iIt had been a rough day.

Peter celebrated not having died by rolling into bed and falling into a deep, black sleep. 

 

 

Hours later, he woke up. 

Before he could even get his eyes open, his arms tangled with the blankets, throwing them off. His legs pushed him up with desperate urgency, everything in a rush -- if he didn't move, he couldn't breathe. He staggered to the door, rounded into the hall and swung hard into Olivia's door, hard enough to strike it open even though the doorknob was within easy reach.

Olivia was immediately awake in her bed when her door exploded in. Faster than she could focus on Peter's backlit shape he was bent over her, his hands planted in the mattress on either side of her shoulders. She felt his breath on her forehead and knew something had happened, that someone was coming for them or something had gone wrong, and he was going to drag her out of bed and pack her into the SUV and they were going to get the hell out of Dodge. But Peter just stopped. Stood there. Dazed. Frozen.

As seconds ticked by, Peter's brain caught up to his body. He identified Olivia first, then her bed, then her room, and finally the full awkwardness of his position. His head was still so damned fuzzy; he was sure if he could just have a few more seconds to think, he could give her an explanation that would make sense, give _himself_ an an explanation that made sense. He had to make it make sense to her so she would take that look of shock off her face.

Suddenly there were little shuff-shuff footsteps on the stairs and Peter panicked. He tried to make the excuse words in his mouth _– this isn't what it looks like_ \--but nothing happened, except that as Walter appeared in the doorway Peter felt something even stranger: the discharge of a knife in an electrical socket compounded with the turning-over of something in his chest, heavy and forceful, and suddenly Walter was slammed into the door of the hall closet.

" _Walter,"_ Olivia said, jarred enough to push Peter up and off. Peter let her push him and stood there, his hands held halfway up in the air, afraid to turn around. He could hear Walter coughing behind him, from the floor. Quiet whispers overlaid the sound of Walter getting to his feet, and then Walter's hands fell on his shoulders. 

Peter spun around with his hands up: _Don't._ He looked sidelong at his father, his eyes dark, angry, cautionary. Olivia stood off to the side, her mouth open slightly, working through something as she stared. Peter glanced at her to avoid Walter's face in front of him. He didn't know how to tell her he was sorry. He didn't know if it would be worse to say he didn't know exactly what was going on.

"Peter," Walter warbled, "son, it's all right." Peter raised his eyebrows, almost a threat.

"No, Walter, I don't think it _is_ all right," he gritted. "Maybe you arrived a little late to the party, but I just-- I don't know. I don't know. But it doesn't look good.”

"Tell him, dear," Walter told Olivia. She approached cautiously, seeing the stress in Peter's face. 

"Peter," she said, "Walter thinks...maybe you were protecting me." Peter forced a hard, short laugh, but he wanted her to keep going. He wanted to believe her. “I have this recurring nightmare,” she said, “about being back in Jacksonville. In that room. With Walter.”

Peter paused, tight-jawed. Walter, on the other hand, could barely contain his enthusiasm. 

"You felt as she felt,” Walter said. "You perceived the same danger.”

Peter couldn't remember ever seeing someone so happy to have been someone else's nightmare. "And what, I just-" Peter shook his head again. "I wasn't even _awake_ , Walter."

"Your amygdala certainly was." 

Peter looked to Olivia. "And how do _you_ feel about all this?" he asked. 

"I don't think anything about any of this surprises me anymore,” she said. Peter accepted this. After the sort of things he'd seen Olivia do, being The World's Most Unconscious Bodyguard almost made sense. But there was still the other thing.

"Walter," he said quietly. His father looked up at him earnestly, like he was waiting for Peter to ask the question. "What did I do to you?"

  
  



	21. December: Sorry Little Blanket

### Sorry Little Blanket

Peter was awake, and so was Olivia. Maybe he because of she. It had been like this for hours. When he finally decided to get out of bed, Olivia sat up in hers because she heard him coming.

"Can't sleep either?" he asked, once he'd braced himself in the frame of her door. He made a scruffy and tired shadow against the hall light. Olivia let her head tip back against the wall.

"Not since yesterday."

"That makes both of us."

"I keep thinking about what happened, and I don't know what bothers me more," she admitted, "that you can see my dreams or that I can't see yours." Peter laughed a little and folded his arms over his chest. His shirt was thin, a nearly colorless blue. Pushing off the wood with his shoulder, he padded towards her, sweeping his bare feet softly against the floor.

"Well," he said, "if you just stay awake forever, we can avoid the problem completely." He reached the bed and put a hand out to touch her quilt, running over the stitching with his fingertips. "Of course, that creates a new problem, which is that if _I_ don't sleep, I'm going to turn into a homicidal maniac." Olivia half-smiled. She was tired, too. She wanted sleep but didn't know how to accept that it was no longer an entirely private act.

"How far is it going to go?" she asked. 

"What?"

"My thoughts. My dreams. I don't know how much you see, or in what kind of detail, but I can only assume it's going to...progress." She anchored her eyes on the shape he was tracing. "Maybe I should go back," she said, and Peter knew she meant to her apartment. It was halfhearted and it was a question, despite the way she phrased it. 

"And crush Walter's fragile spirit?" Peter said. Olivia didn't answer. He knelt by the side of her bed, knees cracking in succession, and rested his arm in the rolls of blanket by her hip. "If-" he started, but backtracked with a flutter of his hand, "No, actually, not 'if.' I'm pretty sure this is going to happen again." 

Olivia was already shaking her head _._ "That's why I should leave," she said.

"But, like you said, how far does this thing go? Are we gonna need to hide the car keys to keep me from taking an involuntary trip two nights a week?" he said. She seemed startled by that, like she'd assumed distance would put her safely out of range. She looked upset by the idea that it might not. "I don't know how it works," he said, "but maybe we don't risk it yet. For my sake, at least."

Olivia pushed her back into the headboard in a weak stretch. She knew she wasn't going anywhere. 

"Look," Peter said, brushing the quilt with a loose fist. Olivia could just barely feel the dusting of his knuckles on her hip. "It's not the worst case scenario you think it is. I can't begin to explain to you how or why I did what I did, but...I don't _see_ anything. It's not like I have a window into your head." He knew it mattered to her, what he saw or couldn't see. He didn't blame her. She was exposed, and she felt it.

"Peter, if you're-" she cut herself short. She didn't want to accuse him. After several months living in his house, she didn't know why she still thought of him that way sometimes.

"What? Lying to make you feel better?" he said. He wasn't too hurt; he was a realist. He scruffed the back of his neck and sighed. "I won't say that I wouldn't do that _in general_ because I think we both know I would _._ But I would call it bluffing; it sounds better that way."

She was stoically expressionless, refusing his humor. He looked up at her.

"Look, I don't know what this thing is going to become eventually, but I'm trying to assure you that, right now, it's not as bad as you think it is."

She smiled, sardonic. "Then why are you awake?" she asked. 

Peter stared at the ceiling for a moment. "It's hard to sleep when you're worried," he said. "It's like you're playing a song I can't not listen to." Olivia made a face. "Take it as a compliment."

"Sure," she said. 

They went quiet for a minute.

"Okay," he said, eventually. "I'm gonna go try this sleeping thing again." He shuffled for the door, turning back at the threshold. "Think happy thoughts?" 

"Will do," she said.

He left her, and got back to his own bed before he turned around. "Actually, let me ask you the question I spent hours working up the nerve to ask you," he said, reappearing in her doorway. "At the risk of not being a big boy, can I stay in your room tonight?"

Caught off-guard, Olivia had no idea what to say. She wanted to give him a flat _no._ That was her instinct, her immediate choice. On the other hand, she had the strongest sense of inevitability, something she was sure Peter shared if only because it had begun to permeate her experience so thoroughly. She would say yes to this question someday. Why not today?

Peter laid persuasion on her thick, pulling up his shirt to show her a golden bruise over his hip. "I've got four more like this from coming to your fake rescue, and the idea of a repeat performance makes me a little less eager to fall asleep with two doors between us."

"And here I was thinking you knewhow to kick in a door," she said. 

"That a yes?"

Olivia thought about it. That sense of inevitability tickled her again. "Fine." 

"Fine is good, too," he said.

"And let's just skip the part where you drag some sorry little blanket in here and pretend you're going to sleep on the floor," she said. It astonished Peter, who was already on his way to retrieve that sorry little blanket; he paused but didn't turn around. From the way his ears ticked up in back, he seemed well pleased.


	22. December: Olivia Sees Over, On Purpose

### Olivia Sees Over, On Purpose

Olivia wakes up in the Chair and seems more disoriented than usual, which doesn't concern anybody as long as the paperclips and staplers stay put (which they do).

"Walter?" she whispers, staring intently at the heavy lab tables, the ones with the built-in gas valves and the stacks of Mousetrap-esque contraptions piled on top. 

"We're right here," Walter says. He leans into what should've been her frame of vision to smile down at her, but she looks right through him. 

"Walter," she whispers again, "Am I here?" 

"You're in the lab, dear," he tells her. "Just as you were before."

Her head jerks suddenly toward the lab doors. "Somebody's coming," she says. "Walter, _am I here?_ "

"Of course not," Walter says, but now it's becoming clear that she can't hear him. She struggles against the chair. Her heart rate increases.

"Goddammit Walter, bring me back," she mutters, at a volume that suggests she doesn't think Walter can actually hear her anymore. Eyes on the door, she gives her hands a last good wrench and shakes her head in frustration.

"Is she _where,_ Walter _?"_ Peter asks darkly.

"You know where," Walter scoffs. "But as is obviously apparent, she _isn't_ there; she just believes she is."

All of sudden, Olivia goes perfectly still. "They're here," she whispers, and all but stops breathing.

"Fascinating," Walter says.

"Walter, I assume 'they' can't actually see her, whoever 'they' are," Peter says, "but all the same, it would probably be kinder to snap her out of it before she passes out."

"Don't you want to see who's in our lab Over There?" Walter asks. "Aren't you curious?" Peter rolls his eyes. "All right," Walter says. He flaps a hand at Peter. "Move away." 

"Why?" Peter asks suspiciously. 

"For my sake, son, not for yours," Walter says. His voice is sing-song, which oddly is how he sounds when he's at his most sane. Peter makes unhappy eyebrows at Walter but he does step away, three great big steps back toward Astrid, who seems to take one great big step forward toward him. "Astrid," Walter tells her, "distract him," and Peter gets the vague feeling that this is some sort of contingency plan of theirs, one from which he's been deliberately left out.

"Sorry," Astrid says, genuine remorse on her face as she pulls back her fist. Peter sees this happen -- how her whole body is feeding the momentum of her knuckles as they fly toward his face -- but he also sees her innocent, heart-shaped face and thinks, _no, no way, not possible,_ even as she socks him in the jaw. 

As she connects, Peter feels a bloom of that insane pull that dragged him out of bed that night not so long ago: that same brutal generator flips over in his chest and he realizes something has happened to Olivia. He _knows,_ just as he'd known before, and this time he's all too aware of the involuntary shock wave he sends out in response. Walter might be on the ground again. But Peter's been so completely confused by Astrid, who is now running behind a table, that no one thing has had his full attention. 

"What the _hell,_ Walter _,_ " Olivia says, behind Peter, and Peter seconds that. He turns around. Walter is hopping in a little circle, wringing his hands and breathing like he's just eaten something too hot.

"Walter?" he says. Walter opens his eyes a crack and they're watering.

"You got me, son," he whispers tersely, but he's smiling. "Just a little sting. Let me just...catch my breath."

"Did you slap me?" Olivia is incredulous. Walter's hopping slows until he is simply pacing.

"Quite hard. But only to jolt you back," he explains. "Excellent job, Aster," he calls to Astrid, who has come out from behind the table and is looking apologetically at Peter, who is touching his lip for blood and looking reprovingly between her and Walter.

"I'll go get some ice," she says.

"In the future, can we find a more benign way to distract me?" Peter asks.

"You'll find a way to control it soon enough," Walter says. 

"Peter," Olivia calls, and Peter forgets his sore jaw and moves to where Olivia should be able to see him. Now, she can. She makes some no-nonsense eye contact. "Get me out of this thing."


	23. December: Olivia Sees Over, More

### Olivia Sees Over, More

 

Olivia seeing over at will is not enough for Walter.

For the next test, he makes sure Peter is sequestered at home.

 

 

"We're going to try a little something different," he tells Olivia, and ten minutes after the drugs kick in, she convulses so hard that capillaries burst in her eyes. He waits for her to become responsive again, for her neurons to settle like Boggle cubes. "Olivia," he says, then, "listen to my voice." 

Olivia's forehead wrinkles. She opens her eyes. Walter cringes at the thought of explaining her red-blotted sclera to Peter, but there is no time to dwell on that. 

"Listen to my voice. Keep listening. Try to focus," he continues. He keeps speaking, using the same tone, same modulation, making it as easy as possible for her to keep with him. Irises reaching, her eyes wander.

"Focus Over There," he says. "Can you hear me, dear?" He keeps talking until she becomes capable of answering.

"Walter," she murmurs, "I thought she was dead. I thought you killed her."

 

 

Peter, at home, uncurls his fingers from where his nails have bitten into the kitchen table. He may not be close enough to do anything about it, but he feels Olivia's duress just the same. It feels like someone's pressed a joy buzzer into his brain. He knows, _knows_ thatWalter's taken all the cars for a reasons -- the reason being that, if he had a car at his disposal, he'd do seventy-five all the way to the lab and tell Walter to his face that the tests are losing their appeal, that he's having trouble seeing the reasons to go on, that he's seriously on the verge of saying, _no. No more. I'm done._

 

 

When Walter and Olivia finally walk back through the front door, he's waiting for them.

"What did you _do_ to her," he grates at Walter, raking Olivia with a glance. She's looking at the ground, and Walter's hoping she'll continue to do so: the longer they can keep Peter from seeing her blood-speckled eyes, the better everyone will fare. 

"I'm sorry, son. I couldn't risk having you there," Walter says, "knowing your inclinations toward me when Olivia is-"

"You do anything to her again while I'm not there," Peter says, arm out, finger needling into Walter's chest, "and I promise you the risk you take will be to your own well-being." He goes to Olivia and puts a hand on her shoulder. "Look at me," he says, because he has a feeling about it, and she looks up at him with those peppermint-bark eyes, and Walter thinks, _oh, dear,_ before Peter turns on him, taking takes big, wide steps that back Walter toward the wall.

"Walter," Peter says. "Her _eyes_."

"It was for her own benefit," Walter says. "You must believe me, son, it was for the best." But Peter isn't really in a listening mood. He steps right up against Walter, into his space, foreheads almost touching.

"She's on board with this? Fine," he says, low and angry. "But I'd better goddamn _be_ there, Walter, and you'd better find a way to deal with it." He pushes off his father's chest a little harder than necessary, storms outside and slams the door behind him. Olivia watches the window and predicts correctly that the Oldsmobile will start and go. 

After the engine noise fades, Walter (still startled and stuck to the wall) says, "I expected much worse." He looks at Olivia, beaming. "He cares quite deeply for you. Isn't it wonderful?" 

Olivia is not as delighted. She glares at Walter as Peter's car disappears down the street. She hasn't taken her coat off yet: good, that's convenient. She turns and goes right back out the door. Her phone dials Peter's number before she gets down the front steps. He answers slowly, screening.

"It's you," he gruffs. He pauses, and when he continues his voice is much softer, like he's given up trying to be mad. "You okay?"

Olivia smiles into the phone. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"You coming to find me?" He knows full well that she is.

"You could make it easy on me," she says, "which I would very much appreciate."

"I'll be at the lab. Don't bring the cavalry, all right?"

"Done."

 

 

When she walks into the lab, Peter's sitting on a bench by Gene's stall, drinking something thick from a beaker. The Brandenburg Concertos play from a record.

"Eggnog," he says, swirling the beaker at her. "There's more on the burner if you want." He gestures toward his setup: an Erlenmeyer flask clamped to an agitator over a low-burning flame. An open fifth of rum is on the counter, but only a small amount is missing.

"You're getting more like your father every day," she says.

"I'm flattered." He heaves himself up off the bench. "Here, let me get you a beaker."

"I'll use my mug," she says, going for her desk, but Peter is undeterred.

"How long has it been since you rinsed that thing out?" he asks. He makes a face and fills a smallish beaker halfway. "Rum?" 

She smiles impartially, coming back to him.

"Rum it is," he says. He dollops and swirls and hands her the glass. They sip quietly. He leans against the table. "I assume there was a point to what Walter did," he says, eventually. 

"Yes," she said. 

Peter waits. The record skips, in perfect time with the music. "You going to tell me what it was?"

"He was trying to help me split my focus," she says. "Sense both sides at once. He thought it might be useful." She takes a deep sip, and licks sweetness from the rim of the beaker. "But I saw something Over There that I think would interest you."

"'Something?' What's 'something?'"

"I think you should hear it from Walter."

"I don't think I'm in the mood to hear any more from Walter, tonight," he says. "And I deserve that much."

"I know," she says. "But I think it's important. I think you'll want to."

Peter throws back the rest of his eggnog. "Sweetheart, short of Walter showing up here for a heart-to-heart, nothing you say or do will get me to leave this lab until this bottle is empty or I stop feeling like a secondhand jumper cable, whichever comes first _._ "

Olivia downs the rest of her beaker, too, and follows it with: "Carla Warren's not dead."

Peter refills his beaker, and forgets to add eggnog on top of the rum. 

"I saw her," Olivia says, "on the Other Side. With the Other Carla Warren."

"Don't see how that's possible," Peter denies. He shoots the rum. "Considering that it was her death that got Walter locked up."

"Let him explain it to you."

"He's had a few years to explain it to me," he says. "Why start now?"

"Let him try," she says, and because it's Olivia asking, Peter reluctantly agrees. 

 

 

They walk in on Walter embellishing on year-old frozen pizzas in the kitchen. Extra toppings sit in queues around him: mustard, peanuts, Steak-Umms. Shards of crushed tortilla chips sprinkle through his fingers onto half-frozen cheese, producing a sound like sleet on ice. Peter circles the kitchen island and pushes aside the bag of chips so he can dock across the counter. 

"We need to talk," he says.

Walter drops his shoulders. 

"Olivia tells me Carla Warren is alive," Peter says. 

"Very much so."

"So, she's beenalive? This whole time?"

"Yes." Walter drags a chip through thawing pizza sauce, dredging up cheese. 

"Walter," Peter says, slowly, "you got seventeen years in a padded cell for that lab fire. Tell me you didn't let yourself get put away for no reason. For mysake, tell me that, because it concerns me that you'd let me go most of my life thinking that my father was some murderous Dr. Moreau, if you knew full well--" 

"It wasn't on purpose, entirely. Not for my part," Walter says. "But I was not the only one involved." 

“That asshole son of a bitch, I _knew_ William Bell was involved with this,” Peter says. “I knew it.”

“The fire seemed purely accidental, at the time,” Walter says, as if Peter hadn’t spoken, “and it would have been entirely harmless, if we hadn’t been doing the surgery.”

“What surgery?”

“Brain surgery.”

“Brain surgery on _who?”_ Peter asks. “On _you,_ Walter?”  


“Oh, no,” Walter says, “mine had been done for at least a week, by this point.” 

“So a week after _getting_ brain surgery, you _performed_ brain surgery on Carla Warren? And she was okay with that?”

“Carla’s consent was irrelevant.”

“Of course; it’s just brain surgery.”

“ _Peter_ ," Walter says, "you must understand: the surgery was performed so that she could continue to live. Knowledge of Belly's technology would have pushed the timeline beyond its optimal trajectory. If Belly hadn’t cut out her memories -- or _mine_ \-- the Observers would have removed us from the timeline altogether. Besides, the surgery itself was perfectly safe: I made sure to take no part in the incisions.”

“Perfectly safe until she died in a fire.”

“She didn’t die in a fire,” Walter reminds him.

“No, sorry, right -- until _somebody_ died in a fire. Who was it?”

Walter shrugged. “The body was provided by the Observers, so that Carla’s loss would be accounted for.” 

“Wait -- why?” Olivia asks. “I thought the Observers wanted her to get the surgery; why would they interrupt it to fake her death?” 

“Carla was a scientist. She had friends, also scientists, who knew she worked with Belly. It would have only been a matter of time before they figured out where she'd gone, if she'd went."

"And then timeline, timeline, timeline, I get it."

"And Carla's surgery wasn’t interrupted,” Walter says. “Belly had just finished with her when the fire broke out. Of course she was still sedated, and there was no way we could have transported her safely out of the lab in that condition, but it was as if a hole opened up, beside them: a door with no frame. I remember Belly looking at me.”

“And then?” 

“And then a ceiling tile fell on me, and I ran,” Walter says sheepishly.

“So how do you know she _didn’t_ die in the fire?” Peter says.

“You saw her yourself, didn’t you?” Walter asks Olivia.

“Now, wait a second, Walter,” Peter says. “I read every word of your court transcripts, several times.”

“Did you?” Walter asks. He seems flattered.

 “And _nowhere_ in there did you ever mention the story you just told us.”

“Because I didn’t know the truth until after I was released. Nina Sharp told me-”

 “You’re trusting a version of events relayed by Nina Sharp?”

“By Belly, _through_ Nina Sharp.”

“By Belly, who was getting orders the whole time from the _Observers?_ ” Olivia interrupts. 

Walter’s face scrunches up in frustration. **“** You don’t understand Belly at all,” he says. “He wanted nothing more than to save _all_ worlds. He worked tirelessly to that end. And if his actions, now or in the past, seem questionable, I must trust that he has found them necessary.”

“That’s an awful lot of faith to put in someone who gave you a partial lobotomy and left you to rot in a mental institution.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Walter says, “ _yes_ he left me there. But he removed himself, as well, from this entire universe, for as long as it might take to ensure the best possible future.”

“And how does he intend to ensure anything, from There?”

“The Observers will assist him, as necessary. After all, it was they who came to Belly to negotiate our future.”

“Why Bell?”

“Because after he invented the time machine,” Walter says. “They were forced to consider him ‘intelligent.’” 

“Bell invented a time machine?”

“I wasn’t _so_ far behind. I would’ve had him, given another three-”

“So the Observers came to Bell because they saw something in our future," Peter says. “Something bad, I assume?” 

“The total collapse of one universe into the other.”

“And they wanted to help out of the goodness of their hearts?” 

“Of course not,” Walter says. “Our disaster will be catastrophic for them, as well: it will our region of time and space uninhabitable by their kind. They experience these dimensions differently than we do-- imagine what might happen if one removed ‘height’ from the North American continent.”

“So what's their plan?”

“They identified a timeline of least harm. This is the one to which Belly is attempting to adhere.” 

“So he left because-”

“-according to the timeline of least harm, Belly -- and the technology he might create -- do not exist. He dies in a lab fire, along with Carla Warren.”

“Okay,” Olivia says. “So these tests. They’re something we do in this timeline? Bell asked you to do this, with us?” 

Walter nods.

“And you didn’t think we should know?” she asks.

“You can’t know,” Walter says. “You can’t know anything until you’re allowed.” 

“By Bell,” she says.

“Yes. I’m sorry, my dear, but it’s-”

“It’s _not_ the only way,” Peter says. “There isn’t just one timeline out of infinite timelines that ends well.”

“Not ‘well’,” Walter says. “ _Best.”_

“Then tell me,” Peter demands. “What happens.” 

Walter shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says.

“You _don’t know_?”

“I can’t know,” Walter says. “My knowledge of future events is not part of the timeline.”

“But the electroshock is?”

Walter looks sad.

“Do we evenmake it through this, Walter? Any of us? Or would the Observers consider us acceptable losses?” 

Walter says nothing. Maybe he can't; maybe he won't.


	24. December: Cat Lady

### Cat Lady

Peter woke up feeling like he was being watched. He opened his eyes and paranoia focused them, a reflex from his past that hadn't entirely gone away. But it was only Olivia, awake before him as usual, looking at him from across the bed. Sort of.

"Hey," he said softly. 

Olivia didn't even blink, just picked up the corner of her mouth a little. "There's a woman where you are, on the Other Side," she said, and Peter smiled. It wouldn't have felt right for her to have said 'good morning' or some other civilized thing.

"Yeah?" Peter wasn't sure if that was interesting, eerie or both. He wanted to think that he'd be able to feel it if another person were intersecting him, even across a universe. "This house is still around Over There?"

"Why wouldn't it be?"

 _Because it's my house,_ Peter thought.As if everything that was part of his life on this side would cease to exist on the Other, because he hadn't been there to make it real. 

"She has a cat," Olivia said.

"So, my place in the universe has been filled by a cat lady? Good to know."

"She looks like a _nice_ cat lady," Olivia offered.

"Oh, good. Great." Peter rolled onto his back, and Olivia reached out instinctively to stop him from crushing the cat before she remembered that these two things did not occupy the same space.

"Sorry," she said. "I'm still getting the hang of this thing."

"Show-off," he said, getting out of bed. "Give me another few weeks and I'll be teaching that cat to juggle knives."

"I'd like to see you try," she said, and deftly caught the pillow he threw at her head.


	25. December: Peter Breaks the Walternator

### Peter Breaks the Walternator

Alone in bed, Olivia swept her legs around, wasting all at once the bounty of cool spots that wasn't there when Peter shared the sheets. Peter was out, somewhere, doing something: weaving through flocks of college students; joining conversations just to practice being someone he wasn't; leaning invisibly on a wall in Faneuil Hall to watch the tipsy flash photographers. It was his escape from the lab and from the constant analysis he seemed to keep up on their work: a ruthless question of, _is it worth it?_

Olivia was afraid that reading Walter's notebooks had changed Peter's answer. Since she'd pulled them from Gene's stall, Peter had been gone more, and longer. She could feel his resolve slipping, his frustration with the project showing, and it worried her because the heavier things got, the less confidence she had that she'd be able to make it through on her own. 

Sleep wasn't enough anymore. Waking up was getting harder every morning, and going to bed felt like falling into a coma, and sometimes things just felt _bad,_ like they wouldn't be good again. And when she was strapped into the chair and she looked at Peter and she could see on his face that he was thinking about the notebooks and opportunity-cost and quitting, she got genuinely scared that he might leave her to do this on her own. Because she couldn't quit, but she was starting to realize how heavily she depended on him to keep her going.

Olivia stared up at the familiar ceiling cracks bathed in flashing Christmas lights, and fell asleep.

 

 

Morning caught her like barbed wire. She grumbled at Peter and bunched the quilt back around her face.

"Five more minutes," she said.

"Back in five," he whispered.

 

 

Half an hour later, having made breakfast and eaten with Walter, Peter went back up to check on her. He shouldered the door to their room open, drying his hands on a dishtowel.

"'Livia? You doing okay?" he asked. She turned her face to him, sheets rustling. She didn't look sick, but she looked _different_ : an atypical flatness in her eyes, and a slowness all around her.

"I'm fine," she said.

"You want me to give you another hour?" he asked. She paused, sighed, shook her head again.

"I'm not going in," she said, and it was like Peter didn't comprehend.

"You're not?"

"Not today."

Peter made as if to take a step back, but didn't. The idea of Olivia not being in the field was completely foreign to him. She was always there. She was a fixture. She would never voluntarily stay away.

"I have these useful things called 'sick days,'" Olivia said, because it felt like he was waiting for her to explain.

"Yeah," Peter said, "you must have about a million of those because I've neverseen you take one."

"I'm just tired," she said.

"You're always tired," he insisted.

"It's different," she said.

He reached out to rest his palm on her forehead, mimicking something Walter had done to him a hundred times. She let him do it and didn't object. "No fever," he said.

"I'm not sick."

"Is it-"

"Peter-- I'm just tired." 

"Tired of what?"

Her only response was to look back at him emptily. Something had taken her and it wouldn’t let go.

"Is there...anything I can get you?" he asked.

"No."

"I can stay," he said, even as he knew it would be too much of an offer for her to accept. Her mouth approximated a smile.

"See you tonight," she said, and drew the covers up around her face.

Peter hovered another minute, observing her strange lifelessness, before heading out. He knew what "tired"was. This wasn't it.

 

 

Half the day was already gone when Peter approached Walter at his bench in the lab and interrupted his custard reduction with a small cough.

"I want you to stop the tests," he said. "Just for a while. Because Olivia's not going to ask you to, and she's running on fumes."

Walter didn't respond at first. He stirred his custard as it thickened, and shut off the gas when he was satisfied. Peter waited for him to get his first spoonful before starting again.

"I read your notebooks."

Walter nodded slowly around his spoon. He had a long history of being unable to hide anything where his son wouldn't find it.

"It's been a month since then," Peter said, "and I've been trying to give you and your experiments the benefit of the doubt. But I've gotta tell you, Walter, I think we disagree on the definition of 'progress.'"

Walter licked his lips but remained imperiously quiet.

"I've been in on this project from the start," Peter went on, "and I still can't see how your hypothetical end is justifying the means. Even when you consider the abilities we _do_ have, you have to admit that we've had to come close to the upper threshold of human tolerance just getting them to _appear_. And that's mostly without control, without mastery, without even a modicum of functionality. I don't think we can handle the doses you undoubtedly have in store for us."

Walter shook his head. "Peter."

"And, look, I listened to your fairy tale about William Bell and the prophecy and the timelines and _even if_ all of it's true, I still have no clue how we connect to any of that. I don't think you do, either. Whatever grand plan you have for us, you have to see by now that it might not be feasible. I tried to get Olivia to see that, but she didn't want to."

"What did you tell her?"

"The truth. That you have no idea how this is going to end. That you were -- that you _are_ \-- guessing, every step of the way. And you know what? She took yourside."

Walter had a weak smile for that.

"So I let it go," Peter said. "I really tried. But now she's worn down to the point where she can't even get out of bed."

"There are always difficulties," Walter said. "Olivia made her decision."

"No. See, that's the problem," Peter said. "She can't make that decision because she doesn't have all the facts. The only reason she's still participating is that she trusts that you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and we both know she's misinformed."

"Agent Dunham is quite capable of self-governance," Walter mumbled around another spoonful of lemon cream.

"Walter, come on, she _believes_ you," Peter said. "Every word you say. You think she's okay with everything you're doing to her, but she gets scared. I can _feel_ it. And for those of us humans with some residual compassion, that kind of thing breaks your heart. These may not be the results you care about, Walter, but they're theresults I see every day. She can barely get up the stairs at night. She wakes up five times and can't get back to sleep. She wears sneakersto work because it hurts her to walk, and today... Maybe you don't know her like I know her, but for Olivia, this is-"

"I know."

"Then let her stop. Let us both stop."

"I can't."

"Look. I know that most of the time, everything seems fine. We're resilient people and we can take a lot of wear, but you have to listen to me: you're destroying her, one test at a time, for nothing." He paused. "I _care_ about her." 

Walter nodded with a fluttery blink. 

"And I can't let you keep stringing her along. You understand that. I need more than your word. Something concrete."

"And if I could give you proof?" Walter asked. "You would continue?"

"Even then." Peter sighed. "Even then, I'm not sure." He waited, then headed for the back room like he was suddenly late for an appointment. "You end it, Walter," he called back, "or I will."

"Oh," Walter breathed, clinking his little cup down on the counter. The spoon rolled off and landed in its own pillow of pudding. "Finally." 

 

 

Against her word, Olivia walked into the lab in the middle of the afternoon, compelled to be somewhere that wasn't her bedroom. She'd even put on her suit. Peter guessed she'd probably turn to sand if she stepped into the lab without her suit on, sick or not.

When she came in, he was working on the Walternator. Disassembled chunks were set out around him, and he was crouched on the floor, elbow deep inside the hull. He didn't stop tinkering, or turn to face her, or even act surprised that she was there. Metal screws squeaked from the Walternator's gut until a stocky, coppery part dropped into his other hand. He held it up for her to see.

"You know what this is?" he asked her.

"Should I?"

"Not really," he said. "But if you're interested, it's a capacitance-coupled voltage transformer. It's the thing that prevents the Walternator-" he tapped the machine "-from frying your brain." Olivia snorted her disdain. "When he gets the New Room finished, this is the thing that's going to let Walter run a full-on power line through your head." He tossed the piece in the air and caught it again.

"Is it broken?"

"No, actually," he said, "Perfect working order." He brought the part to Walter's lab sink and set it on the counter under the shelves of candy-shop chemicals. Peter picked an acid from the array of jars. Then the Walternator's part went into a beaker, and Peter ferried them both to the fume hood.

"What are you doing?" Olivia asked, for the second time. Her eyes narrowed. She took a few steps toward him.

"Maintenance," he said.

"Really?"

"No." He half-smiled disarmingly. He turned back to the hood, flipped the fans on, and poured a nice amount of the acid into the beaker.

"So, what, then?" she asked. She came close enough to see bubbles and brown smoke frothing up. In her head, she weighed the brown smoke against Peter's calm demeanor. "Is it supposed to be doing that?"

"Yes."

They both watched the smoke whoosh up into the vent until common sense told her what was going on. Moving Peter aside for a clear view of the thick dark mess in the Erlenmeyer, she glowered through the hood and made a low, angry sound. Peter ignored the reaction in the flask for the reaction on her face.

"You're taking a break," he said gravely. "We're all. Taking. A break."

"You don't decide that," Olivia huffed, anxious on her feet like there was still some way to salvage the dissolved part.

"I just did. And since that part was custom-made by yours truly, I hold all the chips, here."

Olivia fumed silently, but Peter was committed.

"Come on," he pleaded. "It's almost Christmas. You're tired. I'm tired."

"Remake it," she said.

"Olivia..."

"Remake it."

He sighed. "Give me a week. Just a week."

"That might be a week we don't have to waste," she said.

"I'm willing to bet it isn't."

"Bet on what? On the universe? On our lives?"

"Don't talk like that. It's not like that."

"What if it is?"

"What if it isn't? Aren't probabilities fun?" She breathed fire at Peter while he tried to stay calm.

"'Livia. Give me time. I can take you somewhere. Anywhere. Just, not here for a while, not doing this." His proposition caught her off guard. "I promise you," he said. "One week, and then you can hit the ground running."

She considered it, and then considered that she didn't have to consider it. "I'll get Walter to make a new one if you won't," she said.

"Good luck. You remember Mr. Papaya, don't you?"

"I'm sure he'll be careful."

"He won't."

"Yes, he-"

"No, he won't make it for you. I talked to him this morning, and you can imagine what I had to promise him in order to get him on my side," he lied. "You should know that this -- that _you_ \-- are worth a lot to me."

Olivia had begun to pace, one hand going through her hair like she was apt to do when faced with an unfixable problem. Peter's shoulders fell. He hadn't expected her to take it well, but he'd been hoping she'd understand his reasons. Prospects were looking grim. He reached for a new beaker and filled it with water.

"There's a good ending to this reaction," he said weakly, pointing to the flask in the hood. It had stopped smoking. "You want to see?"

"No, I don't," Olivia said. She tried to think of a way to communicate how deceived she felt, or some efficient way to hurt him, and the best thing she could come up with was her own refusal: of him, his control, his always thinking he knew best. So, _no, I don't_ , was the last thing she said to him. Without giving him room to speak, she left him there in the lab, left him to add the water to the flask, left him to watch it turn a bright, beautiful blue all by himself.

 

 

By the time Walter could get Astrid to drive him home and back, it was too late to prevent Peter from destroying the Walternator. It had taken too long to unscrew the grille from the wall and remember the combination to the lockbox he kept in the vent. He'd had to break it open, eventually, and even with Astrid's agile fingers and Peter's old lockpick from the kitchen junk drawer, it had taken a good half hour to get at the envelope inside. In any event, by the time Astrid ferried Walter back to the lab, the capacitance-coupled voltage transformer was long gone.

 

 

Walter reentered the labmosphere like a comet.

"Peter," he called, waving a folder as he raced down the steps, "I have something to show you."

Peter's escape options were few, including crawling into the vent hood with the spent nitric acid and being slowly irritated to death by the constantly sucking air, or facing his father (same thing, basically). Besides, if he were in the mood to welcome death, he could just go find Olivia: the way things had gone with the CCVT, she'd take him down quick. If he called in advance, she'd probably even clean her gun for the shot.

But Peter wasn't in the mood for escape. He didn't want to have to escape. He felt justified, totally justified, in what he'd done to the Walternator and he didn't need its namesake making him feel like he wasn't. He dumped the beaker of blue liquid into a jug along with the gaskets and bolts and copperless bits that had settled to the bottom, and went to meet his father halfway.


	26. December: Home Again

### Home Again

Olivia didn't go back to the Bishop house after she left Peter standing in the lab with his beaker of brown sludge. Instead, she went to a place that didn't belong to him in any way.

At the door to her building, and again at the door to her apartment, she had to stop and consider which key to use. Flicking on lights that hadn't been flicked on for four months produced the smell of burning dust. The place was surprisingly warm, considering she'd relied on heat from the surrounding apartments to keep her pipes from freezing, but she turned the thermostat up, anyway.

Everything was exactly as she'd left it, exactly as she'd liked it: the world according to Olivia Dunham. There were no extra boots nor soggy gloves by the door, no old records playing and no more lights on than necessary. It took her a minute to remember that she'd used to _like_ the quiet. 

She moved into the kitchen like she were walking through someone else's house -- a suspect's, maybe -- checking corners and seeing into shadows. The countertops were vacant, and she couldn't remember if she'd put everything into closets or if she'd actually lived so sparsely. Hadn't she owned a toaster? Or had she become so accustomed to eating breakfast at the Bishops' that she'd forgotten she'd never really had time for it before? The refrigerator was mostly empty, but she'd left herself a few nonperishables and frozen dinners. She numbed her fingers on an iced-over box of heat-and-eat Thai deciding whether or not it was worth microwaving. It wasn't. 

In the living room, she sat on her couch to see if it was more or less comfortable that the one she was used to. She opened her bedroom drawers to find the only underwear she'd left behind: frilly, impractical things that she more-or-less hadn't worn in three years. In the bathroom she found a towel she'd left out for herself, as if she'd been sure she'd come home within a week of leaving. It reminded her that, for all the charm of the Bishop's old house, the water pressure in her building was a thing of true beauty. She shed her clothes on the spot and let her shower beat the stress out of her.

Feeling clean and warm made it easier to feel at home. The couch seemed more inviting than it had an hour ago, so she situated herself there. It felt endlessly spacious without Peter on one side. She brought out her laptop but couldn't focus well enough to work; ironically it was the lack of interruption that disturbed her.

Finally, she gave up and turned on her television, which greeted her with the Weather Channel and which she promptly corrected to a documentary about the Bermuda Triangle. She tried to snuggle into the couch but lacked blankets, and she felt silly for not having stopped by the Bishop house to pick up more of her clothing; by necessity she was wearing some of that terribly expensive lingerie under the Quantico sweatpants she'd used mostly for housecleaning, and the lace was was getting itchy. She reached under her pants to tug the seams around and tried to pretend she wasn't waiting for Peter's knock at her door.

 

 

Rachel's call from Chicago was nicely timed, coming between the late news and the late, _late_ news. Fifteen minutes in, after Rachel asked, "You sure you're okay?" for the fifth time, Olivia realized what had prompted the call. 

"So, how _is_ Peter?" she asked. 

Rachel skipped a beat, then gave up. "I'm not just calling because of him," she admitted. "And say what you want; I'm glad he told me what happened."

"Right."

"I'm your sister. And if you're upset-"

"Upset? Is that what he said, specifically? What else?"

"You know, he didn't provide a lot of gooey details. I told him the last time there's only so many melted-brain stories a girl can hear."

"The last time?"

"Long time ago. Super long time. But, look," Rachel said, and Olivia heard Peter's proprietary intonation bleed through on that word. "I know you've been having a few tough cases and I feel bad I can't be there, especially when all you have to talk to is those _guys-_ " Rachel said, with love, but also with the exasperation that Olivia found so _very_ familiar, "-I mean...you know?"

"Sure. Absolutely."

"Don't 'sure, absolutely' me. I know you can't stand to let a case get by you. But you know what I told him? I'm _glad_ he lost that weirdo's number. All the time, I think of the crazy shit you're doing, the crazy people you deal with, and I mean, what if you'd gone to see this guy? What if he'd been some psycho nutjob? What if something had _happened_ to you? You can't go doing these things by yourself all the time, and I said to Peter thank _God_ he's over there, losing things, because who knows what you'd do if he didn't?"

No response from Olivia, who was trying to figure out Peter's cover story. She was relieved that he'd lied to Rachel about the nature of their disagreement. Olivia had long ago decided that Rachel would never know the truth about her job. Family was to be protected from these things at all costs, because the risk, the danger, and the potentially violent exit of a loved one was too much to ask anyone to continually brace for.

"And I have to say this," Rachel went on, riding her own momentum, "because I think it's sweet, even if it would just make you angry, and don't tell him I said this, but I got the impression he lost that number on purpose. You know? To protect you?"

"Rach-"

"I know _you_ don't think that's anything great, but _some_ of us would kill to have a guy around trying keep us safe and sound. I mean, how does that not make you feel a little warm and fuzzy inside?"

"Rachel..." 

"You know I have a point, here." A warbling noise rose in the background, identifiable as Ella, whining. "Promise me you'll think about how lucky you are before giving him the cold shoulder for a week."

"A week?" Olivia'd been thinking that a month would about do it.

"Don't pretend I don't know you," Rachel said. Rustling built up on the line (the phone being tucked against a shoulder) and Rachel's sharp exhale fuzzed as she lifted something heavy. "Sorry. We're _trying_ to get to bed," she explained. "Say goodnight to Aunt Liv." Ella's too-loud voice said a blurry 'goodnight' and Olivia could imagine her cheek mashed up against the phone as she was trucked off to her room. "P-e-t-e-r's not going to be dopey-faced over you forever if you don't start appreciating what you have," Rachel said. Muffled complaints about cold sheets signaled Ella's dropoff. "Hey, I have to go help warm some sheets. I love you, okay? I'll call soon."

The line went dead before Olivia could answer, but she didn't take offense; she'd seen what bedtime was like with a kid who thought she was too old for bedtime. She sank deeper into the couch, drifting back to the lulling void of television. Fifteen minutes into the late, late, _late_ show (another universe entirely, full of self-help seminars and dubious inventions that cost only five low payments of $19.95), she admitted to herself that her perspective of the whole situation may have been a little narrow.

Olivia's cell buzzed again and she answered without looking, because it was Rachel's pattern to have remembered something that couldn't wait.

"Love you, too," Olivia said.

"Wow," she got in return, in Peter's ruffled-feathers voice. "I think your sister might be some sort of wizard."

"Uh," she huffed. "Peter. I thought you were-"

"Rachel; yeah, look, about that: I had to call her. I swear I didn't say anything too touchy, but you left in a bad way and I knew you weren't gonna be calling _me_ up for moral support, so, I'm sorry. Kind of. But you have to know that I'm thinking of you, here, and Rachel, and, sure, I'm thinking of myself, I'll admit that. But only in that I know how it feels to see you laid out like a damned corpse, and if I'm even half as close to you as she is, it'd kill her to think you had no one to go to."

And suddenly that thing that Peter had said a while ago gained a new dimension: he was her family. Which, before, had meant to Olivia that they lived in the same house and ate groceries from the same bags and slept like dogs on the couch when they felt like it. But now, she saw that it meant he was in a cruel position: he was family who had to know the truth. She couldn't spare him the details of what she was doing to herself. And, being her family, what did she expect him to try to do, but the thing she did for her sister? Protect her. From anything he could. At all costs.

"You there?" Peter said. Olivia hesitated. She hadn't had time to dissect the way her thoughts had just shifted. Part of her wanted to keep hold of her grudge, but the other part was already reaching for something else.

"You said something," she said, "about..."

"About?"

"Going somewhere." _Taking me somewhere_ felt too reliant, too passive. "This week."

Dead, dead silence. Then: "Uh. Yeah- really?" 

Olivia let herself smile faintly, but not enough that he'd hear it in her voice. "Did you have anything specific in mind?" she asked. "Or was it an empty threat?"

"No!" he said, too quickly: the first sign of a bluff, but she was willing to let him run with it. "I stand behind _all_ my threats. That's how I come by the repeat business."

"Right."

"So..." he said. "Does this mean you're coming home? I don't think you can pack for anything from there; I've seen what's left in your underwear drawer and it looks like torture."

"Feels like torture," she conceded.

" _Really._ " He paused. "Red?"

"You know I'm not actually going to tell you that, right?"

"You don't have to tell me. I know. The blue looked way more uncomfortable."

"This week will go better for you if you hang up the phone now; I can promise you that."

He was quicker on the hang-up than Rachel.

  
  



	27. December: Packing, Again

### Packing, Again

Olivia packed only one bag for the week of 'vacation' she'd promised Peter: it was a small bag, light, and it sat by the door, ready to go, for days before they were set to leave. When Peter saw the size of it, he worried she wasn't planning to be _anywhere_ with him for a week -- that she intended to give it a day or two to make it look like an honest try before she asked him to take her home. Compounding his worry was the fact that Olivia hadn't slept in a bed with him since he'd broken the Walternator. Peter didn't know if she were planning to ever sleep in a bed with him again, even after he remade the part and no matter how many good times he could fit into a week.

It wasn't as if Olivia was making a point to be upset with him; in fact, the opposite was true. Since she'd come home from her angry stint at her old apartment it had seemed like nothing (well, nothing _else_ ) had changed between them. But however things seemed in daylight, Olivia had been reliably finding ways to avoid sharing blankets in the dark. It shouldn't have bothered Peter as much as it did -- they didn't do anything in bed but sleep, after all -- but it was a clear take-back of an intimacy she'd given him, and he hated to lose ground.

Sleeping alone for a few nights had given Peter time to think. The things Walter had shown him after he'd broken the Walternator had changed the way he thought of their roles in the world. While he remained fundamentally, viscerally opposed to Olivia running herself into the ground for _any_ reason, he'd had to admit to himself that her reason for running herself into the ground was perhaps the best in the universe. Her project ( _their_ project) was objectively worthy of any time and energy they could throw at it. The destruction of the Walternator -- which Peter had convinced himself had been a noble and protective act -- now washed manipulative and unfair. For the sake of the universe, he knew he should be following her example instead of trying to lure her away.

And what was the trip for, anyway? Olivia's health? As if being kept away from her focus for a week would _relax_ her. The truth was that Peter's trip would have only one certain beneficiary: himself. He would get Olivia to himself for a week, and maybe he'd even get the other thing he wanted: to be as important to her as the project. To be her focus, if only for a week. The frank selfishness of it was almost enough to make him call off the trip, to spend his next waking hours remaking the CCVT and hoping she'd agree to forget he'd ever trashed it. But, though it made him vaguely ashamed of himself, Peter knew he was willing to play bad odds with a large bet if it meant he could move Olivia out of harm's way. 

 

 

There were exactly enough articles of clothing in Olivia's bag to last her seven days, assuming that the first and seventh day were for traveling.

She was still only halfway to forgiving Peter and fighting every step. There was no clear way to organize what she felt: no folder for 'betrayal' next to the one for 'understanding.' Mostly, she wanted Peter to admit to being wrong, to call off the trip and let her get back to work. But sometimes, part of her (the part with occasional nightmares and sore joints, maybe; or the part that was as confused and scared as anyone would be, who could see through the walls between worlds) wanted Peter to remain immovable.

Being the appointed president of the Cortexiphan club was hard on its best day. Being the best hope of billions of people made it difficult to justify a day off, or a slow down, or a stop (even for a little while), because personal problems paled in comparison to the extinction of a universe. It bound Olivia to deal quietly with the unhappy surprises of progress (the pain, the loneliness of knowledge, the strange sensation of always being tested), and most of the time, she did. But it was a heavy toll she paid to the project, day-to-day, minute-to-minute.

When Peter had shown her the Walternator's missing piece dissolving in a beaker, Olivia hadn't felt betrayal but relief, so strong and unexpected that Olivia'd thought she might dissolve a little bit, herself. Betrayal had come afterwards -- genuine and devastating in its own right -- but a distant second. And it _wasn't_ right that Peter had gone behind her back, had overridden her decisions and assumed he could decide what was best for her, but it also wasn't fair that she couldn't dig herself out of the grave of her own obligation, or that she would wake up every morning with as much debt toward the cause as she had breaths in the day. 

Working cases made the issue easier to avoid. Bodies were quick distractions, and there was usually an abundance. But nights were difficult, and proximity to Peter was worst. She couldn't be near him without feeling like she had to fight him, had to stand up for herself and tell him where he could stick his self-righteous vacation. At the same time, she gravitated toward him: feeling, in his presence, the press of responsibility getting a push back from his desire to shield her from its effects.

On the day they left home, Olivia still didn't quite know what she wanted most. She remained an uncertain charge in an electric field, changing direction all the time.

 


	28. December: Road Trip

### Road Trip

They'd only been in the car an hour, but Peter had already offered her water and several flavors of Walter's homemade soda. While 'Charlton Heston' and 'Righteous Wave' were intriguing flavor names (and on another day she might have tried them), Olivia resisted his offers, holding on (and making sure Peter knew she was holding on) to what remained of her anger.

"Feel like telling me where we're going, yet?" she asked. She'd only asked three times so far.

"Upstate," was his answer, slightly more detailed than last time's _you'll find out._

"Which state?"

"That would be the question, wouldn't it." 

Olivia turned restlessly back to the window. It was too early to predict anything from the road signs; all she could tell was that they were in New Hampshire, dipping on and off the highway onto various city streets. Maybe their destination was the next town, maybe Peter was making a break for Canada or maybe he was taking the scenic route to Idaho. Maybe he was making it all up as he went.

"Do you even _have_ a destination?" she asked.

Before he was bound to answer, Peter's phone buzzed from the cupholder; he checked the caller ID and tossed it to Olivia. "Walter," he apologized. She grimaced.

"I thought you said this was a vacation," she said, sliding the phone open against her ear. Peter heard Walter start to ramble without waiting for a salutation. "Walter-" she stopped him, "Walter, it's me." Peter could imagine the, _oh, hello, dear,_ that followed _._ "Yeah, hi," Olivia said. "What is it?" After a short listen, she put her hand over the mouthpiece. 

"He wants to know if you're going to stop at Clam Haven," she relayed. She waited for Peter's answer, half assuming that Clam Haven was a town and half not caring at all, except that as she glanced out the window she saw a squat, white shack with a plain, wide sign. Her eyes stuck on the lettering as the car passed by. "Walter, how-" she said into the phone, and then changed her mind. "Walter, do you know where we're going?" she asked, and Peter had to snatch the phone out of her hand.

"You realize it's December," Peter scolded into the receiver. "And you want me to stop at a boarded-up clam shack? What am I gonna do, take pictures?" He rolled his eyes at something Walter said. "Yeah, but- ... No. ... No- just, _no_. This is not an emergency, Walter. I'm hanging up now," he said, and he did, dropping the phone back into its little well.

"Sorry," Peter said. "I _did_ tell him emergencies only."

Olivia put a foot up on the dash. "Food usually is, with him."

"I should've specified blood and/or gore."

"You'd have to split hairs over ectoplasm."

"Ugh," he said, shaking his head. "It's like leaving an eight-year-old home alone."

"Maybe a thirteen-year-old. He does know how to order pay-per-view porn."

Peter cringed. "Oh. Yeah. I was hoping you wouldn'tnotice that. Ever."

"He's not so good about changing the channel afterwards," Olivia said. "On the upside, you can't get much more innocuous than girls on trampolines eating ice cream."

"Oh, _please_ can we not talk about it."

Olivia sat back in her seat with a small smile while Peter winced and tried to think about vector multiplication, Schrödinger equations, Taylor series, anything but girls on trampolines eating ice cream. It was difficult, though. He just _knew_ his father sat through it wondering what flavor the ice cream was.

As their conversation fell further behind them, Olivia's smile faded. It felt good to throw words back and forth together. They hadn't, really, since their argument over the Walternator, save for his dig on the phone about her underwear. But as good as it felt, she was irritated to have given up her gravity for some easy banter. She would forgive Peter, eventually, but she didn't want him to think it had already happened.

 

 

Some time after noon they stopped into a diner along a four-lane road that sufficed as a highway. Peter's phone buzzed again as they crossed the parking lot toward the chrome doors. He didn't bother to check the ID, just opened it and asked, "Is something on fire?" Then, "Will something _be_ on fire in the next five minutes?" Then, "Walter, tell me you didn't call to tell me that." He rolled his eyes at Olivia, who lagged behind him. "I'll tell her." Olivia frowned at him. "I saidI'd tell her. And for the record, Walter, this is _also_ not an emergency." He hung up. "Apparently," he sighed, slowing to let Olivia catch up, "it will be a crime against man and nature if you don't order the jalapeno grilled cheese."

"If _I_ don't order? What about you?"

"Lost cause. Walter and I are diner incompatible."

Olivia wanted to volley back about everything at a diner tasting like that week's batch of grease, but she tamped it down. _No banter._ She walked faster, getting ahead of him in time to avoid having him hold the door open for her.

 

 

The menu was illustrated with tiny men drawn in Grecian style, with tiny Grecian fig leaves over their tiny Grecian bits, and Olivia stayed glued to it until the waitress took it away. Then she had no choice but to interact.

"Did you plan _everything_ about this trip so exactly?" she asked. Peter stopped organizing the sugars in their caddy.

"What do you mean?"

"Walter called as we were walking into this place. You must have written out our schedule by the minute." She stole the sugar caddy from him, jealous of his distraction. "Doesn't seem like you."

"No," he sighed. "He just got lucky. He knows our destination, he knows when we left. You know what they say: genius is ninety-five percent inspiration and five percent-"

"Extrapolation?" she finished. Peter watched her try to strap down a prideful smile at finishing his stupid joke, ducking her head toward the table to mask it.

"Yes," he said. "Absolutely." Olivia continued his work on the sugar caddy. From the look that replaced her smile, Peter thought she might have regrets about smiling in the first place. He waited for her to get bored with the sugars, but after a while it didn't seem that she would. He cleared his throat.

"Look," he said. "I want to apologize."

"If you're going to apologize for breaking the Walternator, don't," she said. For the first time since they'd gotten into the car, she looked straight into his eyes. "We both know you're not actually sorry." Peter was relieved to hear her say that, relieved to hear the resentment in her voice. It was, finally, an open admission that she was still upset.

"I _am_ sorry," he insisted. "I was trying to help. I had your best interests at heart and I just- I didn't think it through like I should have. And I'm sorry." He waited hopefully for her response, but she was distracted by something over his shoulder: their food arriving in a storm of steam and cheese. 

Half of her sandwich was gone before Olivia spoke again, and then it was simply, "Okay," dropped noncommittally between licks of her fingers. Peter got the feeling that nothing had changed. It made him want to keep talking until something penetrated.

"I promise," he said, "at least, I promise I'm going to _try_ to make this trip worthwhile for you. Just give me a chance. Then, if all you can think about is getting back in the Chair, I swear I'll drive us home and work without sleeping until the Walternator is back up and running." He held his hands out in appeasement, half a sandwich in one and a pickle in the other. "Deal?"

"Sure," she said, expressionless.

"Olivia."

"What."

"You have to let me apologize."

"Then you have to actually apologize."

Peter put his sandwich down but kept the pickle, a sour brace against his consternation. "I said... Look, I don't know how else to tell you, but I'm-"

"-sorry, but you only did what was best for me?" she finished. "That's not an apology; it's a justification." Indignation almost made Peter argue the point. He'd engaged in way too much introspection over his actions, over the trip, over the way he'd gone about this whole thing, for her to tell him he wasn't really sorry. But he didn't want to make things worse. Not over sandwiches in some anonymous diner.

They finished their food in silence that was uncomfortable enough for Peter to consider driving home after the check came. But he couldn't. Because as awkward as things might get between them, he wanted them in the same cage until they fought it out. If he brought Olivia home, she'd make space again, distance to increase the momentum of their conflict, and if things went that way they might build a whole bomb from a speck of plutonium.

 

 

Out of the diner, insulin and direct sun played keep-away with Olivia's brain. She slept in the car until the sound of the tires changed from a constant 65-mph hum to the gravel-crunching stop-and-go of exit ramps and intersections.

"Where are we?" she asked. She felt disoriented and grungy, in need of water, or maybe some Charlton Heston.

"We're getting there," Peter said, glancing over. Her hair was clinging to the headrest in static tentacles. "You need a stop?" 

Olivia looked groggily out the window at the scenery: auto garages, scrapyards and industrial buildings on a backdrop of tall, scrappy evergreens. "In a while," she said.

 

 

The stop Peter picked was a convenience store that abutted a park. He bought himself a superfluous road map so they could use the bathrooms, and when he came out, Olivia was gone. He found her in the park, walking laps around the playground. Instead of trying to keep pace, he wandered inside her orbit and sat on the steps to the monkey bars. It reminded him of being with her in Jacksonville, only colder. As she burned the restlessness out of her legs, her laps got smaller and smaller until she fizzled out, coming to a stop in front of him.

"Feeling better?" he asked.

"I know we haven't been driving for very long, but...I'm kind of dreading getting back in that car," she said. Peter huffed a quiet laugh at the wood-chipped ground.

"Yeah, me too." He dug his toe into the chips, finding dirt underneath. "I guess this was a little ambitious," he said, after a while. Now that he had what he'd thought he wanted -- Olivia, alone, with no drugs in sight -- he felt foolish for thinking he could make her do anything, let alone enjoy spending her enforced free time with him. Olivia looked over his head, watching some kids on the swings. 

"Well," she said. "On the plus side, you've got me far enough from home that I'm not exactly looking forward to the drive back." She tucked hair behind her ears. "That's good for you, right?"

He squinted up at her. For a second, she looked more insecure than sarcastic. "I think so," he said. 

They loitered a little while longer, making furrows in the ground, until a gaggle of parents started giving them The Look.

 

 

When they made it back into the car, Peter's phone was beeping. Two of Walter's three messages were park-themed: _take her on the swings, Peter, you've both always loved the swings_. The other was donut-themed, referencing a shop across the street. Peter listened to the first five seconds of each before getting back out of the driver's seat. It was no longer even remotely coincidental that Walter knew where they were.

"What's going on?" Olivia asked. She was already buckled into the passenger's side, but she bailed when she saw Peter duck behind the car.

"It wasn't luck," he grumbled, feeling around under the chassis. "Walter GPS-ed us."

"It's our phones," she said, "He's probably got Astrid helping him." Peter shook his head.

"Not possible," he said. "I obfuscated our signals before we left; I know how he is."

"I should bring you in on destruction of government property."

Peter concentrated, his hand working with something Olivia couldn't see. For a second, she saw him arm-deep in the Walternator again, removing that magic piece. "I don't think our phones cost Uncle Sam more than $100," he said. "Misdemeanor all the way."

"Another one for your collection."

"It's a hobby, what can I say?" He wrested a small, taped-up parcel from the inside of the rear bumper. "There we go," he said, holding it up. It was clearly homemade, a true Walter Bishop artifact, complete with Easter Seals stickers that had come in their junk mail. "I'll bet a lot of people would be more worried to find something like this stuck under their car."

"What are you going to do with it?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Toss it, I guess. Unless you want Walter to footnote the entire trip."

"Well, you can't ditch it here," she said. She jerked her head slightly toward the parents on the playground, who were now intently watching Peter, in his black coat and sunglasses, handle what looked like a bomb pulled from under his black, government-plated SUV.

"Oh, great," he said.

 

 

They ended up driving Walter's device a few miles up the street and throwing it discreetly in a McDonald's trash can.

"What do you think," Peter said, when Olivia climbed back into her seat. "Can you manage a straight shot the rest of the way?"

"How far is 'the rest of the way?'" she asked.

"Not very."

"I'll last."

 

 

As the sun was reaching the tree line, Peter pulled into a gravel driveway alongside a wide, low-grass field. The smell of horses preceded the sight of them. At the end of the driveway there was a house, and beside the house there was another driveway, which Peter drove down until he reached a small outbuilding. He parked by a side wall, and when Olivia opened her door she smelled cedar resin rising from the shingles.

"Horses?" she said, hesitating in her seat. 

Rising from the car, Peter shrugged on his jacket. "Thought you'd like them."

She got out, stretching her legs. "Because girls like horses? Unicorns and Shadowfax and all that?"

"No," he said, tilting the rising syllable toward the ground. "Because I thought _you'd_ like them. Power and silent strength and all _that_." 

She fell silent, and Peter waited by the car while she looked around, finding her bearings. Unless she'd missed a state crossing, they were in Vermont, and from the time they'd spent in the car they were close to the Canadian border. Trees surrounded the open fields on all sides, deep greens that bleached the grass. Mountains punched out of the sky, and she could guess at how big they were or how far away they were but couldn't know both at the same time: Heisenberg's geography.

"So, was 'cowboy' one of your many fake careers?" she asked, watching the woods.

"Those careers were only a little bit fake. But no," he said. "Though I used to be handy with a rake."

"Please tell me we're not here to shovel."

"That would be counterproductive. And, also, too close to our day job," he said, following the short path to the cabin door. "I'm trying to get you to _enjoy_ life, remember?" He turned back to see her standing by the car with her arms crossed. "You know, fun?" he prodded. "That thing you used to have before my father started gluing googly eyes on papayas and trying to turn you into a real-life Superman?"

"Superman didn't have to take road trips with Lois Lane," she said, grudgingly pushing off from the car to follow him.

"But I'll bet Batman spent a lot of time in the Batmobile with Robin, Boy Wonder," he called to her.

"Yeah, Batman," she called back. "He was a pretty well-adjusted guy."

 

 

The cabin had one bed and one couch, and Peter dutifully planted his things by the latter.

"What are you doing?" Olivia said. It was one thing for her to have been avoiding sharing their bed for the past week. It was another to see him act like Their Bed didn't exist. It worried her in a way she hadn't foreseen, hadn't thought about, hadn't even considered a possibility. As important as it was to her that he understand how upset she'd been, she didn't want to make the backward step permanent.

"I didn't want to be presumptuous," Peter said, standing by his bag.

"We've been sleeping in the same bed for weeks."

"No, we've been sleeping in the same bed for weeks, _minus_ this last week, when you've been doing anything you possibly can to avoid it." It took Olivia too long to shoot that down. "I don't think it's a stretch to think you might not want to snuggle right now," he said.

"It's not...like that."

"Really?" he said, arching an eyebrow. "Coulda fooled me." She looked genuinely hurt. "And I _did_ willfully destroy the Walternator," he admitted. "So. It's not like I blame you for being mad."

"I'm not..." she attempted, failing, and he laughed.

"Right. So you'renot mad, and I completely believe you." He fell heavily back onto the couch. Olivia stood by her bag, her hand on its handle, and for a second Peter thought she was going to ask him for the car keys. But then she came over and flopped down next to him, turning her head against the upholstery to meet his gaze.

"I am mad," she said. "Yes."

"I know," he said.

"I'm mad at what you did, and how you thinkyou're apologizing when you're really not. And what I really want is for you to stop thinking you can make decisions about me, for me. You're smart, but you're not smarter than me." She paused because he raised his eyebrows at that. "Okay," she said, "with the exception of those fake little internet IQ tests you and Walter compete over. But on the subject of me...not ever."

Peter didn't say anything at first; her words crowded his pride. "I get that," he ventured. "But I-"

"No," she said, pulling away from the back of the couch. "This is the point: there is no _but_."

"But that's...crazy _._ You can't expect me not to look out for you!"

"I can look out for myself."

"Sometimes I don't think you're interested in doing that!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that I don't think you think about the cost of what you're doing."

"What I'm doing is-"

"Yeah, I know, saving people, fixing worlds; important, I get it, but-" He didn't know how to communicate to her the fear, the worry, the empathetic pain. Olivia waited for him to finish instead of speaking into his pause, and Peter almost spilled everything into the silence: his confusion, his inability to understand why she let him sleep in her bed and hold her on the couch but couldn't deal with the idea that he would react reflexively to the idea of her harm. " _But,_ I care about you," he said, finally. As the words left him they felt pathetically weak, diner coffee to the espresso of his feelings, and yet still on the border of too strong; he didn't know if she would drink anything besides diner coffee with him, now or ever.

"I know you do," she said.

"No, you don't. If you knew how much I cared, you wouldn't expect me to sit back and watch you plug in."

"If Walter said that to you, you'd call it manipulative."

Peter hadn't thought of it that way, certainly hadn't _meant_ it that way, and he could see how it could be taken that way but-

"I'm not saying you have to stop stop...caring," Olivia said, still odd around the word. She put her hands on her knees. "But that's all I want you to do."

"Caring about you won't save your life," Peter said, and it exasperated her that, of all their possible futures, he could only focus on the most horrible.

"Why is it that you act like the only outcome for our experiments is-"

"Death? Your death? Yes. _Yes._ Even if it isn't the only outcome, it's _one_ outcome, and it's sure as hell the one that plays over and over again in my head, every time Walter puts that needle in your arm, every time I think about the future he's preparing you for."

"I can't help that you think that."

"But you can help me feel better about it. Let me feel like I have some control over what might happen to you. To me. To both of us." He was close to begging. He'd be on his knees, if he thought it'd sway her.

"I'm not trying to deny you that," she said, and meant it. "I just want you to understand that I make my own decisions, and they're mine, and even if you don't like them, they stand." 

Peter looked, somewhat hopelessly, over at her. He stopped himself from speaking and made himself think. It couldn't be easy for Olivia to be on-call for the universe, and yet she did it, at the expense of herself. Maybe he couldn't understand her motivation, but he could certainly understand the feeling of _owing_ something. He owed this universe a kind of debt, himself. It had given him time with her. With Walter, too. How much would he give up if it would save them, or keep them safe? How quickly would he race to sacrifice everything he had? Peter looked at Olivia's tidepool eyes and felt a sharp pang of empathy. 

"Okay," he said. "I- okay. Point taken." He ran his hand over the rough woolliness of the couch. They lay back again, staring forward at a yard-sale painting of cowboys hung on the wood paneling. "You've been thinking about this a while," he said.

"About a week, solid."

Peter nodded, trying to find a pattern in the spots of a cowboy's horse. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't want to give up the delusion that there's something, _anything_ I can do. It scares me to think that there's nothing you wouldn't do. Which is exactly what I'd do, in your position. Except I'm not in your position, I'm in the position of losing you, and I... I hate it."

"I know."

"I'm glad you're here." He looked down. "I don't know if that makes you think I'm not really sorry for asking you to come. I am. But I'm still glad you're here."

Olivia closed her eyes. "Me too."

To his surprise, Peter felt better. This conversation was the price of his actions. He'd anticipated it to be something he'd have to con his way through, to make Olivia believe that he'd done the right thing. Instead, he'd understood her, and it made him feel more confident, ironically, than any con would have.

"Peter," Olivia said finally, "I want you to know that I appreciate the thought you put into this trip. But if the vacation you have in mind for me is sleeping alone in a cold bed, we're going to have a problem." She smiled, and Peter felt a wave of optimism. 

"You realize _you're_ the one who sleeps warm," he said.

"Only after I'm already warm," she said. "There's a threshold."

"Well." He shifted on the couch. "I have no problem being your enthalpy fairy, if it means I don't have to sleep on this thing." He wriggled against it. "I think it's stuffed with twigs."

"I think," Olivia said, with an awkward lean, "you may be right." They held their positions for another minute because neither one knew what they would do once they got up.

"Walk?" Peter suggested.

"Definitely."


	29. December: Owl Spotting

### Owl Spotting

Vermont wasn't as painful for either of them as they'd thought it might be, starting out. Peter filled the first few days with sensory gifts: bacon waffles with maple syrup; a newspaper spotted with donut frosting; strong coffee on a porch covered with pine needles; a second-run movie in a theater with actual curtains. Since they'd hashed out their differences on the first night, Peter felt like Olivia was really trying to enjoy herself. She smiled more, talked more, and sometimes she even laughed. They'd gone to see the horses a few times and, despite expressing no desire to ride, she'd patted them fearlessly on the nose and neck, pleased with herself.

Peter worried, though, that he was missing some bigger picture. Walking around town with her, stopping into little places filled with penny candy and one box of every brand of toothpaste, he kept feeling like he was skating the surface of how she felt. Playing card games at the kitchen table, he watched her bet and suspected that, despite the penny ante, she was holding back. And at night, when she climbed into bed with him, he received her warmth gratefully but sensed a gap in the circuit between them that he hadn't fully closed, one he couldn't locate on his own.

 

 

Once, on the third day, he tried to press her about it.

"So," he said delicately, over the mystery stacks at the tiny library/town hall/post office, "how're you holding up out here?"

"What do you mean?" she said, flipping through the pages of a cheap trade paperback.

"I mean, you've made it three days out here, confined to mostly small and dusty places, with me. And while I'm sure I'm one of your top three favorite people, alongside my father and possibly our pizza delivery guy back home, I'm still impressed you haven't chewed off one of your limbs trying to escape." 

Olivia reshelved the book with an odd look toward him. 

"What I really mean," Peter said, "is that I hope you're having as good a time as I am."

Olivia's odd look faded, but didn't quite disappear. "Sure," she said, and she picked up another book.

It was all the answer he could ask for, but it didn't reassure him at all.

 

 

On the fourth night, he drove them home late after a few beers in town. They went straight out again for a walk, not ready to sleep. The road through the woods was abused and abandoned, all disintegrated asphalt and loose stones, happy to trip Olivia sideways while she forged ahead in the dark. Peter followed, wide pupils staring into the dark space between indigo trees. When the moon came out of the clouds, leafless saplings glowed against the heavy firs like bones.

"Am I going too fast for you?" she called back to him. He heard a twig snap under her foot and the nearly-silent expletive that followed.

"Sounds like you're going too fast for _you_ ," he said, picking his way around a frozen puddle the size of a small lake. She'd probably just gone right over it: fearless as usual.

"No such thing," she said. She stopped by a stand of birches, iridescent in a cloudbreak. Peter caught up to her a minute later in a burst of crackling ice.

"What is it?" he asked. Without answering, she gazed silently into the woods. Peter looked with her, and they both heard the sound when it came again. Olivia turned back to him, surprised by her own excitement. Though he could barely see her expression, Peter couldn't help but mirror it.

"You never heard an owl before?" he whispered. He'd heard a hundred owls, mostly through the window screens of the cabin on Reiden Lake. Maybe there weren't as many owls on army bases. "Didn't you ever go to Girl Scout Camp?" Olivia shook her head at him. Between them, her smile was Velcro-sticky and tough to ignore. "He's probably sitting up there," he said. "Look in the low branches."

As she scanned, Olivia realized that she was looking for the shape of the only owl she knew: plastic, with eyes that moved only back and forth. Of the two owls in her world -- one a shadow not yet filled in, only a hope of seeing, and the other hanging on a wall miles and miles away, the heartbeat of the home they'd left -- what excited Olivia most was the prospect of seeing the latter again.

Peter glanced at her, not meaning to catch her looking at him but catching her just the same. "It's right behind me, isn't it," he deadpanned.

She played along willingly, looking just over his head. "Big teeth, for a bird," she said. Peter grinned silently, and though she'd seen him do it a hundred times, it looked different when he did it now. The dark made everything feel just a little bit unreal, and that unreality made Olivia feel _different_. She leaned closer to him, frozen dirt crunching under her heels.

"I didn't think I'd say this on this trip," she said, "but I'm almost having fun."

If Peter didn't know better, he might have thought she was drunk. "Yeah?"

She didn't answer, but for a second, before the moon submerged again, they stared at each other in a way they hadn't, quite, before. And then it was gone.

 

 

An hour later they came out of the woods, through the edge of the trees and into the open field. Olivia was leading, still, and Peter didn't bother to call to her when he stopped halfway across. Had the sky been clearer, he could have shown her how even the best of planetarium shows can't get close to the real thing. Ten yards ahead of him, Olivia stopped, too, like she'd had the same idea. 

"Peter," she said. He approached her looking up, ready for her to point to whatever it was, so when he felt her hands on his neck he almost backed away in surprise. She didn't let him. She kissed him, instead.

Shock kept Peter still, but Olivia moved like it was something she did all the time, something _they_ did all the time. She walked into his body like a warm wall and, when he'd recovered enough to breathe, she took the breath from his mouth until they were both dizzy. In the middle of the tall brown grass, Peter held her head in his hands and let the world spin. The most he could think to do was lean into her, keeping them both standing as she put more and more of her weight against him. She pulled at his collar, riding it up his neck until it almost chafed.

"Peter," she whispered, when she pulled away.

"Right here," Peter reminded her, in case she wanted to try again. He was pretty sure she would; anyone who kissed like that often did. "Jesus Christ, sweetheart, I'm right here." He breathed against her cheek, closed his eyes, and waited. But nothing happened. He'd never waited out a longer minute than the one before he opened his eyes to a cold vacuum of air and the ghost of her face as she turned away from him, starting back toward the cabin. He followed her, and it was force of hope that made him expect something more to happen once they reached it. But again, nothing did.

She disappeared into the bathroom, and he waited until he couldn't keep his eyes open for another minute, finally falling asleep with his clothes on, sprawled across the bed that was meant for the both of them.

 

 

Olivia looked over him when she emerged, from the hand spread over his stomach to the tiny upturn of his slack mouth as he breathed, dreaming. About her, maybe. Lifting his arm from her side of the mattress, she placed it by his side and lay down where it had been.

"Peter...," she whispered, and then hesitated, on the verge of saying more. Shifting against him, she put her mouth as close to him as she dared. His warm hand reflexively reached for her hip, and suddenly the precipice of the next words seemed too real and too steep. She turned away in a quiet hurry, shoving her pillow under her chin, and tried until daybreak to fall asleep.


	30. December: The Accident

### The Accident

They went out to see the horses because it was their last night in Vermont, because they were antsy for home, and maybe because Olivia was trying to keep Peter from asking whether she intended to finish what she'd started by kissing him the night before.

It was easy to hop the fence, even in the dark. Out in front of them, the horses were invisible until they moved, approaching like tugboats on night water, and by the time Peter heard a soft snort on his right, they were already close enough to touch. Peter was wary of any one-ton animal, but Olivia knew no fear. She reached for a white-striped face before Peter could caution her not to, and when she touched it, all seemed well for a minute.

Then, not so much.

Maybe the horse reared because it didn't know her, maybe because it was dark, maybe because fate speaks in strange ways in desperate times. Whatever it was, the horse lifted up, front hooves cycling, and Olivia tripped backward to the ground where her shadow would have been. Peter saw her go sprawling and, for a second, he didn't catch the problem. Then gravity started to take the horse down again, iron shoes first, and he saw quite easily the path they were taking, through air (and Olivia's head) to the ground. He didn't even have the luxury of yelling Olivia's name before the hoof came within an inch of her face.

And stopped.

 

 

Peter's eyes stayed fixed on the hoof. So did Olivia's, mostly because the hoof obscured her entire field of vision. She didn't move because she couldn't move, didn't think because she couldn't think. Her brain felt funny, slow and unresponsive, and she'd be too clumsy to roll away in time, even if she tried.

Peter was still for a different reason. It was something he _felt_ , more than saw: a funny perspective he'd never had before. Unlike Olivia -- who was blaming her inaction on shock, sure that she could get her feet under her if she could only focus -- Peter knew immediately and clearly what he was doing. He had four arms, four legs, two minds and all the little superpowers she'd ever had. Maybe Oliviadidn't know how to control her powers yet, but inside her head heknew (just _knew_ ) how to maneuver, and it seemed to be working well enough to stave off disaster.

Olivia's eyes flicked toward him, white as the horse's, and Peter saw that their connection was less than two-sided but more than one-sided: that, through his own understanding of what was happening, Olivia was becoming become aware of it, too. But the mental indignation he got from her in response was weaker than he knew it should have been, her protests diluted and hollow, and Peter realized that when you put enough of something into a closed space, you have to crowd something else out.

He reached into her mind, trying to find her, but it only made her signal recede. He withdrew sharply (but too far): the hoof wobbled as Olivia's consciousness gained a foothold, pushing back, and Peter knew he was about to lose her in more ways than one. Every ounce of presence he had left inside her went toward stretching her arm out to him, far enough that he could get his hand around her wrist. As he backed out of her head altogether, he pulled hard, as hard as he could, and when he heard the thump of hoof on earth it felt like he'd been waiting forever for that sound.

 

 

Olivia came back to herself quickly. The cold helped. The pain in her shoulder helped. Peter didn't help. He'd stayed standing and she was still on the ground, on her back, arm laid out toward him but wrist no longer in his grip. Her gaze fixed on him and turned dark.

Peter didn't apologize. He didn't move. Just stood: watching, waiting.

Getting to her feet was harder than Olivia wanted it to be. Her shoulder rotated fine, through the ache: a small miracle in a sea of fuck. She hesitated on her feet for a minute, looking around, but the horses had already fled to the far side of the field. Brushing a clump of frozen grass from her elbow, she tugged her shirt back into place and moved off, leaving Peter behind her, standing alone.


	31. December: The Discussion

### The Discussion

Olivia was in the bedroom, and Peter couldn't go in. He was afraid to, actually. Through the slightly-open door he could see a slice of her, sitting at the edge of the bed like a cactus in the dark. He couldn't see her face to tell if she were staring ahead at the wall or the mirror or if she were thinking, eyes closed, hands still.

He was waiting her out on the twiggy couch, where the consigned cowboy painting wore slowly on his mind. The sagebrush had turned yellow and sour, the dirt had gone salmony and the whole thing was swallowing the sallow horse in a puddle of flesh tones and Peter was actually feeling queasy looking at it, but he couldn't get up because then it was Olivia, just Olivia, the only other focal point in the entire cabin. And...he couldn't.

But he also couldn't let her sleep there like he knew she eventually would: still in her clothes, askew across the bed, dropped in place at the moment she'd decided not to be awake anymore. It would be cowardly on his part to let that happen without trying to intervene (even though it was cowardly on _her_ part to be sitting in there, avoiding him), because it was he who'd invaded, so to speak, and it was he who needed to invade again. So to speak.

Truth be told, if his intentions were simply to make amends he'd have been in the room with her an hour ago, as soon as he'd followed her into the cabin. But there was more to it, now. Everything had changed. In six seconds in a field, Peter had gone from being a man of one mind to a man who, by half-accident and instinct, had existed wholly in two. It had been the same sort of revelatory experience as becoming aware that there was another universe running parallel to his own. Granted, answers hadn't come attached to that mirror universe; its existence had only been a riddle, unsolved, a machine to spit out question after question. With Olivia, though...finding another universe in herwas different. Beautiful. But how could he tell her that?

Olivia prized her individuality. Her self-sovereignty. Peter did, too. He prized all that made her, _her_. To Olivia, the accident had probably seemed an act of terrible violation. Blurring the lines between her mind and his had always been a no-go, even in the infancy of his abilities.

Problem was, now that Peter had been withher (in a way so far from simple mind-reading that it was almost incomparable) every other thing seemed wrong: the shocks, the drugs, the useless tiny increments of progress. The answer to their experiments was _them_ : both of them together, working this way and Peter couldn't prove it yet but in the space of an evening he knewit.

It would be a fight to get her to understand. It wouldn't be enough for her that Peter could think her thoughts and understand how she moved through the world like he were the mapmaker, herself. If he went into that room, Peter knew, the answer to all Olivia's questions would be this thing she wouldn't want to hear: that she could save the world, if she'd give up the boundaries of her self.

 

 

Peter put off the confrontation until he started getting tired, himself. When he pushed the door open, Olivia was still perched on the bed, empty as a cicada shell. She didn't respond to him until he'd stopped between her and the mirror, and even then it wasn't much of a response.

"I'm fine," she said.

"Good," he said. They each waited for the other to crack, but neither of them were really the cracking type.

"I don't think you want to talk about what that was," Peter said, finally. "But I think we both know what that was."

"Safe to say," she said.

"And I know we have an agreement about me, you know, _going there_ , although I hope you can agree that tonight was fairly heavy on the extenuating circumstances." He waited. Didn't know whether to move toward her, back away or do nothing at all. "Maybe you want to talk about that _._ "

Crossing her legs at the ankles, Olivia sat even more forward than Peter thought she could manage, like one of those plastic birds that balances where it shouldn't. "This wasn't just you 'going there,'" she said.

"It's not like I meant to," Peter said, though he suspected she cared very little about his intentions.

"It wasn't like you figured out my favorite color, Peter," she said, looking through him. The heel of her shoe rubbed at her ankle. "It was like I wasn't even..." What could she say? _There? Necessary?_

Stopping himself from saying _I know_ (because he didn't, really) Peter stepped back to the wall. Where his shoulders touched, he felt a wave of electric rage, like the walls were part of her, like the whole space had become her makeshift body and he was still invading, still trespassing even now. "You want me to go," he said. Olivia toed the wood floor, letting her shoe catch the edge of an uneven plank.

"Yeah," she said. "I do."

He walked out. It was the best thing he thought he could do.

 

 

It was almost sunrise when Olivia came back to him. She stood at the border of the room, calling his name as he sniffed awake on the itchy couch. Peter squinted into the center of the Olivia-shaped eclipse of the light from the bedroom. Behind where she stood, he could see that the covers on the cabin's only bed were still neatly in place.

"What if I'm not what Walter thinks I am?" she asked.

From the decided tone of her voice, Peter couldn't at first tell that it was a question except that she stood and waited for an answer. And what answer did she want? He knew better than to have expected an incoherence buffer from a woman who was wide awake the second she opened her eyes in the morning, but still, a preface would have been nice.

"What if you're not what?" he asked, clearing his throat.

"What Walter thinks I am," she said, ignoring his lag. "He has these expectations of me," she said. "He's been clinging to them since Jacksonville." She circumnavigated the cabin's cramped living room until the cowboy painting hung like a text box beside her head, and then she slid down the wood paneling into an awkward crouch. "It's like, ever since I walked into that daycare, he's had has this idea of what I'm supposed to be capable of, what I'm supposed to be doing...some role I'm supposed to play."

"My father's had plenty of expectations for lots of people," Peter said gently. "Don't let the pressure get to you."

"It's not th-"

"He's just invested, sweetheart. Not because you're a supersoldier -- at least, not anymore. You're family."

Olivia put a hand to her forehead like she were hiding a regrettable tattoo. "He's wrong."

"About what, being family? Look, I warned you before: you can't just opt out of being an honorary Bishop just because you get a taste of the family traditions."

"I'm not joking," she said, and her tone warned Peter that he should probably, actually wake up. He took it as his cue to sit up, rolling his shoulder a few times in the hope that the circulation would come back.

"Okay," he sighed. "I'm listening."

"Walter's experiments with Cortexiphan gave me abilities, but not because they were in me to begin with. He picked me, and he _made_ me, and he never looked around to see whether he'd made the right choice."

"But you _were_ the best. You're still the best."

"Not anymore." She raked her hair back. "Peter...what you did out there, last night -- it was Nick Lane all over again, but more: stronger, better. You didn't need me; you _were_ me."

"That's a little extreme, don't you think?" he said.

"Look at me, and look at you," Olivia said emphatically. "There are things you can do now that I've never been able to do, and I've been practicing since the lightboard bomb. More than a year. I've been _trying_ , Peter."

"Considering that this is the first and _only_ time I've ever won Iron Chef: Cortexiphan, I have to say you are a _ridiculously_ sore loser."

She frowned at him angrily.

"Okay. I'm sorry. Look, until we started the tests, I never thought you took that stuff seriously," he said.

"Someone tells you you're a supersoldier? That you're going to have to save the world someday? You take it seriously," she said. Her calm slipped for a second; he saw it in the punishing flex of her toes against the floor. "I spent so much time with that stupid box, Peter. I spent _so_ much time, trying to turn myself into this thing that Walter said I was. But I did it out of pride," she said, "and it was a mistake. I wanted to believe that I was..." She licked her lips and started again.

"I thought the tests would unlock something in me. I assumed that eventually I would move beyond the abilities I'd had as a child and then something else would appear, something bigger or better or more meaningful, and that's how I'd know what I had to do. But that hasn't happened. My abilities now are the same as I've always had: amplified, maybe, but fundamentally unchanged. It's _you_ who's moved beyond, Peter. I saw it that night you almost broke my door down, I saw it the night you showed me the Leonids, and now...

"Think about it," she pushed. "Think of how many things have had to align to keep you here, in this universe, on this path. Think of all the situations you've been in where you should have died, but didn't, because outside forces intervened to keep you alive. Your father, the Observers -- _twice_ , the Observers -- and even me. Whether or not you want to deal with implications of that, I think it's become clear that, whatever I was supposed to be, you're it _._ "

"What are you saying?" Peter asked, bewildered. "You think I'm going to patch up the universe because, after months of mainlining psychotropics, I can get in your head? Hell, with a metal helmet and two tabs of acid, _Gene_ can get in your head."

"We both know it's more than that," she said.

"Not true."

"If we're going to bank the future on someone, it should be the one who-"

"I don't think so," he said. Somewhere along the way, Olivia's tone had changed, and Peter didn't like how. She'd come into the conversation worried and uncertain, and had turned aggressively surer. Whereas she'd begun by questioning, now she was lecturing. Whatever she'd meant to convince him of, she was convincing herself instead.

"Peter, what I'm saying is, I'm done thinking that I'm the one to do this," she said softly. "If we want the best possible outcome, we have to be realistic."

Funny how quickly things could change: a week ago, Peter would have done almost anything to hear those words from her mouth. Now that he knew better -- had seen what Walter had shown him -- he worried that she might mean them, because if she did, it would be at least partially his fault if the timeline went sideways. He was the one who'd worked so hard to convince her that the project wasn't worth its cost. He was the one who'd forced her hand in breaking the Walternator. It almost felt like his duty, having bullied her so hard in the quitting direction, to bully her back the other way. Or would that be just as wrong?

"Are you trying to give up?" he asked. "Is that what you're getting at?"

"No," she said. "I'm...adjusting my perspective."

"Like I said: giving up." To Olivia's great confusion, Peter started to smile. "Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"Yeah, 'okay.' You go ahead," he said, "because I remember what happened the last time you got scared: you saw that building glimmer and saved a couple hundred lives. You solved that light box and saved six city blocks. You saw _me_ , and maybe that saves the universe, in the end. So yeah, go ahead and be scared. _Try_ to give up. You'll only come back stronger."

"I'm not _scared."_

"Yeah, I know," he said.

" _Peter."_

"Look. Whatever doubts you may have about yourself and your part in whatever it is that we're supposed to do for this universe, I'm sorry. I put those doubts in your head because I wanted you to step back from the insanity of what we do. But I was wrong. When Jones popped up two years ago with that lightbox, he didn't give it to _me_. The ZFT manifesto, talking about 'recruits' and 'supersoldiers'- that's _you_ , Olivia, you and Nick and all those poor kids, and it's unfortunate what happened to the rest of them, but you came out on top for a reason."

"Unfortunate?" Olivia said, challenging him to say it, to remind both of them that her former colleagues were, at present, mostly deceased. Peter refused to tread there.

"Stop," Peter said, more to himself than to her. "This is crazy. Remind me never to take you out into fresh air again, sweetheart, because you short circuit and I forgot to pack an extra battery. Let's go home. Go home, watch NOVA, sleep in our own bed again. You can talk to Walter, and he'll explain-"

"I'm not going 'home'," she said. "I'm not doing this anymore."

"What do you mean you're not doing this? You _are_ this. You were the one who first convinced me of how important this project is, and it's been your faith that's kept me in, and I'm telling you _nobody_ has given more than you have, or done more than you've done: not me, not Walter, not anyone, and I think that says something about your role, or your purpose, or whatever you want to call it. You need this project, and this project needs you." He flexed his shoulders to release the tension he saw in hers.

"Here's what I think," he continued. "I think that what happened last night scared the shit out of you, and not just because it turned your head inside out. I think you're worried that you're not performing up to these expectations you think Walter has, and I think disappointment might be one of the only things that scares you more that having your head turned inside out. I think you've really managed to convince yourself that all this bullshit you're saying is true, because it's-" he clicked at his cell on the end table and its face lit up "-5:17am, and you're in here practically begging me to fight you on it because, for once, _you're_ having the crisis of faith and it's so foreign to you that you can't handle it."

"I don't think you understand what I'm telling you," Olivia said. "I quit."

"Think of it this way," Peter said. "You think I'd be willing to let you quit? To go back to the tests without you? To participate in _any of this_ , without you?"

Olivia's shoulders held a defiant line for a minute. Then, she took a deep, almost apologetic breath, and Peter saw tears in her eyes. It was odd to witness, like seeing someone without their glasses. 

"Screw it," he sighed. "There's something I should... no, there's something you _deserve_ to know."


	32. December: The Confession

### The Confession

"First, let me say, I'm sorry," Peter said. "Because I should have told you this before we left. I should have told you as soon as Walter told me, and I would have, except that I promised him I wouldn't."

"What?"

"Him and that stupid timeline; you can only image: like the universe is going to crack in half if I tell you his little secrets. But considering the way you're feeling right now...I think that if there _is_ a timeline, and if we're as important as Walter thinks we are, then things will adjust. So. Here." He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a thickly folded rectangle of copy paper. Placing it onto the floor, he slid it toward her. "He gave this to me the day I broke the Walternator."

Olivia unfolded the papers slowly, turning the packet around in her hands so that every fold undid itself in the same direction.

"It's a copy of something William Bell took from the Other Side," Peter said. "The way Walter told it, it's their master plan. Some kind of prophecy." Olivia reached the penultimate fold, and Peter stopped her hands. "When you look at it," he warned, "it's going to seem impossible. But it's real, and it's old -- older than us, by a lot -- and however it came to be, here it is." He released her hands. The final folds yielded.

"Peter," she said. She looked up. "What is this?"

"Us," he said. He pointed to the sheets. "If the likenesses aren't exact enough, that's our DNA, right there, behind them. Apparently it goes on for a whole book, but Bell only bothered with these."

Olivia held the pages loosely in her lap. "What does it mean?" she asked.

"Walter was a little vague about that. I tried to get details out of him, but all he said was that we needed to keep going, and this was how he could prove it to me. And, consequently, how _I_ could prove it to _you,_ if I needed to."

"These pictures are supposed to convince me to keep going? I don't even understand what they are."

"It's the way the world ends," Peter said. "I mean, the _good_ way the world ends." Olivia looked alarmed. "No," he said, "not like that. Let me start over."

"Please."

"Whoever gave Them these documents left a story along with it. Our universes _will_ collide, and only one will survive, and we pick the winner."

"Peter-"

"I know it all seems...crazy," he said. "But, isn't everything we've seen? And you can't deny that the supporting evidence does exist: the Shapeshifters, our abilities, and now these pictures."

Olivia sighed.

"You didn't hear Walter talk about this," Peter said. "I mean, he seemed as sure of this as he's ever seemed about anything. He can tell you the story himself, when we get back. After everything that's happened, I'm choosing to trust him. Not because I think he's one-hundred-percent sane, but because trusting Walter has reliably turned out to be the safest bet in almost every Fringe-related situation."

"What happened to your allergy to risk?" Olivia said.

"First of all, that allergy was to _your_ risk, not mine," Peter said. "Second...I can't explain it in a way that would make sense, but after what just happened, I'm not worried about that anymore. It's like, when was in your head, I saw the answer to all of this just for a second, and I don't remember what it was, but I know it was there. I know I don't want you walking out of this movie before the end."

"And what if Walter's wrong? What if William Bell was wrong in the first place?"

"It's possible," Peter said. "But we've come this far. I know I've been telling you, repeatedly, that none of this was worth it. I used to honestly believe that. But I'm telling you now that I've changed my mind. I think we can do this. In fact, I think we might be the only ones who can."

Olivia thought for a long moment. Despite her vocal doubts, she seemed happier now than she had when she'd come in. "Have you been bribed?"

"Sweetheart," Peter said, "with what could Walter possibly bribe me? Edible slippers? Mind control peanuts? A remote control doppelganger?"

"Maybe he already built the remote control doppelganger," she smirked.

"Would a remote control doppelganger know that you like Scotch because of the way I pour it? That you pretend not to like my choice of beer so I have to get two six-packs instead of one? Or that you secretly find the idea of mind control peanuts intriguing?"

"Don't flatter yourself; I've been drinking Scotch for years."

"Not the way I make it."

She blushed.

"So, how about it?" he asked. "Can I get you back on board?"

"Peter," she said, thinking, "if I do come back...if I choose to believe all this...there will be limits to what I'm willing to do."

Peter understood immediately what she meant. The suddenly expansive bounds of his ability scared her. The blurring of self scared her. After what had happened between them in that field, it would have been unrealistic to expect her _not_ to set limits. But her limits were an obstacle they'd have to overcome: in the same way that Peter now felt the prophecy to be true, he felt that their connection would be paramount to their success. Their portraits, after all, had been clearly (and very deliberately) linked.

"Okay," he said. "Limits."

"We keep the tests on the same track. No introducing this new thing, not until you can control it, and even then. I'm not sure I'm ever going to be willing to be a human puppet. We need to be clear on that."

"'Livia-"

"We need to be _clear_ on that."

"Yeah. Okay."

"Okay."

"Okay." He waited. They stared at each other, then at the floor. "'Livia?"

She looked up.

"I understand your objections, and they're fair, I know. Just...keep this thing in the back of your mind somewhere. Think about it. Please?"

The wait for her answer was extremely long.

"Okay," she said, finally. "But don't expect me to change my mind."

He put out his hand. "Truce, then," he said.

She took it. Shook it. Even smiled, a little.

"Truce."


	33. December: Christmas

### Christmas

On Christmas Eve morning, the Roast Beast went into the oven. It contained (or not) a bone (or several) from an uncertain part of an undetermined animal, and Walter wasn't answering questions. He'd brought it home swaddled in butcher paper and laid it to rest in its roasting pan bassinet. Peter, on his trips through the kitchen to raid Olivia's popcorn ball stash (which was poorly hidden in the Tupperware village under the counter), warned Walter that it might take a week to cook through something of its size, but Walter extolled the merits of patience and gelatin.

After Walter's Beast-related materials were cleared from the kitchen, cookies were the next point of attack, despite the risk the gingerbread men would face baking shoulder to shoulder(?) with fifteen pounds of guess-the-species.

"He couldn't have waited until the cookies were done to put that thing in the oven?" Olivia complained as she spot-licked molasses off her fingers. Peter frowned over the kitchen island at her, his hands full of still-warm dough.

"I'm sure he could have," he said, working the dough into a ball, "if you didn't want to eat it until New Year's."

"You're assuming I want to eat it, at all."

"Peter!" Walter interrupted, calling from upstairs. "Peter!"

"Oh, Jesus," Peter said. "Not again."

The house still lacked a Christmas tree, and the intensity of Walter's tree-fever over the last week had generated enough tension to raise the hair on Peter's neck. In fact, battling with Walter over procuring a Christmas tree had crossed, for Peter, into the premonitory, and now his neck hairs sent a prickly warning that the subject was about to be broached once more.

"Peter!" Walter called again, this time over the thunder of his winter boots down the steps. "Maybe while the cookies are-"

"No," Peter said. He thumped the dough flat against the butcher block. "No more. Three days of tree-hunting with you is my limit."

"But we haven't tried every place," Walter pleaded, clumping into the kitchen, thick with outerwear.

"I think, Walter," Peter said, "that freezing my ass off in three different fields of hundreds -- _hundreds_ \-- of trees while you wandered around for hours and chose _none of them_ is sufficient participation on my part. I'm not actually convinced there's a tree out there that would please you, besides that fifteen-footer the Boy Scouts had, and we've already had that discussion."

"What was the matter with the rest of them, Walter?" Olivia asked. "Did they fail the interview?"

Walter puffed up like a poked alligator. "Selectivity is nature's sieve," he muttered, looping a scarf around his neck.

"Walter," Peter warned. "You don't look like a man who's accepted that he's notgoing tree-hunting."

"Perhaps because I am, to the contrary, going tree-hunting. I don't need a chaperone," he snorted.

"I assume, then, that you'll be carrying the tree home?" Peter asked. "Or would you prefer to drag it?"

"I thought I might take the car," Walter ventured, tapping the counter with hopeful fingers already snug in their driving gloves.

"That's funny," Peter said, "because _I_ thought that the operation of motor vehicles was limited to those with a valid Massachusetts license. All in possession, raise a hand." Olivia's floury left rose obediently with Peter's, although she glanced at Walter with casual regret for participating. "Sorry, Walter," Peter said. "Maybe next Christmas."

"There can't not be a tree," Walter said. "We've never not had a tree."

"Except for the last two years?" Peter reminded him. "Maybe next time you can be happy with less than your soul mate in pine."

An idea struck Walter. He dug abruptly into his Elizabethan layers of coat, undercoat and overcoat to produce an object not unlike a valid Massachusetts license, except for the red 'Federal Bureau of Investigations: PROVISIONAL' stamped across its front. "I have _this_ ," he said.

"There's a reason it says 'provisional,'" Peter said, annoyed that Walter would choose this moment to recall his inventory of personal belongings, when most of the time he refused to remember that he even owned a wallet. "I'm sure Olivia can tell you which incinerator the FBI throws that card in if you use it _ex proviso_."

"Actually, Walter," Olivia said, "I think that'll be fine. Just for today." 

"Seriously?" Peter turned and stared over his shoulder at her. "You're encouraging my father to drive an automobile, _alone,_ to a place where he gets to cut something with a saw? _"_

"He wouldn't be alone if you'd take him," Olivia said, "but you're not going to. _I'm_ not going to take him, because it's my Christmas vacation and you can't make me. We're not calling Astrid because I would sooner risk an eight-car pileup than bother her on Christmas Eve. And, Peter, I happen to know that you went to school with the guy that runs the tree stand in the Trader Joe's parking lot. Don't deny it; Walter told me." Peter threw a look at Walter, who had obviously set up his dominoes in advance. "So call him up, mention your new credentials and suggest that it would be a kindness between old friends if he were to make sure Walter makes it back in one piece"

"I don't see any reason to think that I wouldn't," Walter huffed.

Peter rolled his eyes, but was outnumbered. "Fine," he said. "Go. But I'm not making any calls. Trust me, you don't want to remind anyone I used to know that they used to know me. You're on your own, Walter. Rely on the kindness of strangers, and for God's sake, write our phone number on your hand."

 

 

"Well," Peter said, watching, from the front window, Walter's third exit from the house. "I don't think there's anything else he could have forgotten." Leaning back to spy on the kitchen, he saw Olivia close the fridge on the last of their dough and stretch deeply toward the ceiling.

"Where's the liquor I know you have?" she called to him. "Walter's gone. Break it out."

"Ah, I see," Peter said. "Is _that_ why you saw fit to strip me of my filial authority and send my father to his floundering doom in a snowbank?"

"A snowbank would be too tame a doom for Walter. If anything, I'm worried about your friend at Trader Joe's."

"Me too, kind of," Peter said, shuffling back to the kitchen. The floors were drafty, and he was on the verge of borrowing some of Walter's unfashionable woolen socks to replace his chilly cotton grays. "I hope, for Walter's sake, that he _doesn't_ introduce himself. I spent all of fourth grade fleecing that kid out of his lunch money."

"You? Impossible." She tilted her head. "We have this conversation more and more often as time goes by, don't we?"

"Yeah, well, I had trouble playing well with others." He slid across the hardwood to the closet that housed the ironing board (and, by some organizational rule that made sense only to Walter, the saucepans). In its recesses was a blue and white speckled lobster-boiler, the removal of which spilled newspaper circulars, bank calendars and tide tables onto the floor. Under the boiler lid were the bottleneck stalagmites Olivia'd been wanting to see since the stress of Vermont, the two days of apartment cleaning in anticipation of Ella and Rachel's arrival, the disappointing closure of O'Hare and the subsequent cancellation of a Dunham family Christmas. Peter removed three bottles and dug out a saucepan as well.

"Cooking something?" Olivia asked, itching to hear the snaps of screw tops unsealing.

"A trade for Astrid," Peter said, hefting the pan onto the stovetop and firing a burner on low. "A scheme to get our hands on the best pies that planet Earth has to offer. Don't worry: I'll share. Consider it payback for your popcorn balls."

"Ugh, I _knew_ that was you," Olivia said. "Dammit, Peter, those were hard to find." She sulked briefly. "And how did you trick Astrid into baking you pies?"

"I convinced her that I make the best eggnog that planet Earth has to offer." He twisted the cap off the rum, and Olivia smelled the wave of black vanilla from where she sat. Peter took a fortifying sip. "Which, actually, is more true than not."

"So," she said, eyeing the rest of the bottles, "which of these are for Astrid, and which of these are for right now?"

Peter smiled sideways at her.

"Have I told you, lately," he said, "that you're my favorite kind of person?"

 

 

The ratio of rum poured between souvenir shot glasses and Astrid's eggnog was an even split, but almost all the brandy made its way into the pot. The creamy result smelled like a soused partridge in a fermenting pear tree.

Floating on a few fat fingers of Goslings Black Seal, Olivia played a one-sided game. It was stupid and not quite fair against a fuzzy opponent, but the gumdrops were plentiful and it was loopy fun to see how many she could plant on Peter's person without him noticing. All it took was a sweet smile, a slight brush or bump and a surreptitious release of candy into his apron pocket. By the time Astrid stopped by, Peter - busily making gingerbread men out of the first round of chilled dough - was wearing almost a bag's worth of gumdrops in his apron, a few more in the pockets of his pants, and had no idea about any of them.

In a reversal of her vow to break Walter's stereo for playing carols on repeat, Olivia had lined up some Burl Ives at a robust volume. It was into Ives' jolly voice that Astrid bustled when she arrived, carrying a short stack of white baker's boxes. She deposited the pies on the counter, eyes watering from the alcohol vapors, and looked Peter and Olivia up and down.

"Seasons greetings," she said. "Should I put these away or just hand you kids a couple of forks?" Peter twirled to the overhead cupboard to pull down a tumbler. In a swooping movement Astrid barely followed, the tumbler filled itself with the scant remainder of the brandy and docked in her hand. "Sit down, make cookies," Peter invited her, pulling out a stool but forgetting to move out of her way. Astrid cocked an eyebrow at Olivia, who cocked an eyebrow at the gumdrop-stuffed zeppelin of Peter's apron pocket.

"Cookies, huh?" Astrid inquired politely, surveying Peter's handiwork on the cookie sheets with a slight frown. "Peter...these-"

"Eggnog's ready," he said, not waiting for her critique. Producing a funnel, he repackaged the nutmeg-speckled elixir into the empty Goslings jug. Olivia got up for a glass of water and scored three more gumdrops into Peter's back pockets off a clumsy feint. Astrid shook her head, and when the oven timer went off she decided she didn't trust either of them to reach in.

She shut the oven door as soon as she'd opened it.

"What is _that_ ," she said, staring at her reflection in the tempered glass.

"Roast beast," Peter and Olivia answered in unison.

"What beast?" Astrid asked, but got only twin shrugs. "Is this Walter's idea? You've seen Soylent Green, right?" She sighed and went back into the oven for the tray of brown-edged cookies. Peter tightened the cap on the eggnog.

"There we go," he said, self-satisfied, and presented Astrid with the bottle like it were a vintage wine. Setting the hot pan of cookies aside, Astrid examined it as if it were, too. Then, inspired, perhaps, by Olivia's demented game, she made coy eye contact while reaching down between them into Peter's apron, her hand grazing alarmingly close to his Little Gingerbread Man. Peter's face went cautiously blank. Astrid wiggled her eyebrows, mistletoey, and for a second Peter thought he'd hallucinated her girlfriend altogether - she _did_ have a girlfriend, didn't she? What was her name again? Jaimie? Janey? But then Astrid held up a red gumdrop, sparkling on her fingertips, and bit back a smile.

"Thanks, sweetie," she said, lifting the candy off her fingers with a dextrous tongue. _"Merry_ Christmas." She sauntered away, and Peter heard Olivia high-five her as he looked down into the candyland his partner had made in his clothes.

"Great," he said, shaking the blush off his face like an Etch-a-Sketch. "That's great." He dusted some sugar off his butt, where Olivia must have missed an attempt. "X-chromosomes are Satan's Darwinism," he griped, before picking a gumdrop out for himself and thinking that it was about time for Walter to be rolling back in the door, treeless and annoying.

 

 

The horn on the Vista Cruiser was Walter's herald, and he laid on it in triumphal blasts from three blocks away. 

Spatial reasoning was not his strong suit. Formulas, equations and dose calculations were all within his means, but matters of size and proportion were a different story. It would have been immediately obvious to almost any passer-by that the tree strapped to the roof of the station wagon would not fit in any ordinary home.

"Did you even _try_ to measure that thing?" Peter yelled, trotting out to meet the car with a spatula in his hand. Flour puffed off his shoulder and there were Red Hots stuck to his sleeve, dropping off into the snow as he hit each step of the porch. Astrid and Olivia trailed out to view the carnage, and behind themthe sunset glow of the house was kaleidoscoped with pink and red and green from the neighbors' strings of lights.

The gigantic, mesh-wrapped fir was hanging Seussically off the station wagon, its tip dusting the street with every bounce of the tires. Walter had the driver's window open, maybe to let out some of the solid mass of Christmas carols extruding from the speakers.

"Walter, did you even _try_ to measure that thing?" Peter yelled again, as the wagon pitched and rolled into the driveway. The treetop scraped up a mess of the sandy snow piled at the curb. Walter gave Peter a thumbs-up with his proud grin, and despite the size of the mammoth on the car, Peter grinned back.

"She's a good tree," Walter yelled back. "Your friend was of great assistance, once I mentioned you."

"I'll bet he was, that son of a bitch," Peter said. "I'll get a saw."

 

 

The tree fit, eventually, in two parts. Its wide lower half truncated at the upper limits of the living room, and the top branches grazed the arrow-shaped cracks in Olivia's ceiling. Peter, having dragged the top up the stairs and set it upright in the corner, wiggled his sappy fingers as Olivia tried to figure out how she was going to access her closet without traveling to Narnia.

"Who sets an old man up with the King Kong of Christmas trees? I _told_ Walter not to drop my name," Peter said, trying to snip off the branches that promised to stick him in the delicates if he should stumble to bed in the dark.

"There was more to that relationship than just lunch money, wasn't there?" Olivia needled.

"Isn't extortion just just lunch money for grown-ups?" He ripped off a low-lying spike. "All I'm saying is, next year, either _we're_ getting the tree, or there isn't going to be a tree. I think I could have sawed through an I-beam faster than that trunk."

"I think it's kind of nice," Olivia said.

"Well enjoy it, sweetheart, because when it starts shedding, you're hauling it out to the curb."

"Too much heavy lifting?" she teased.

"All that cookie-cutting wears on a man," he said. "My shoulder is numb."

"I'd offer to switch jobs and let you decorate again," Olivia said, "but I'm reluctant to see more of what you think is appropriate."

"Look, that first batch was a joke."

"A joke with one leg and a leg-sized-"

Peter's laugh was not well disguised by his fake cough. "Well, I guarantee you those are the first ones Walter's going to take."

"Peter," she said, rolling her eyes. "Get out of my room."

 

 

Astrid stayed through the (literal) tree trimming because she'd had too much brandy to drive away, and spent the following hour laughing over the kitchen island with Peter and Olivia for the same reason, until the last batch of cookies went into the oven and her impairment had worked itself out. Then, brushing flour from her nice red dress, she announced her impending lateness to a holiday party and went for her coat.

She almost made it out of the house unscathed by Bishop Family Tradition. She was so close, in fact, that she was fitting her arms through the sleeves of her peacoat when the first loud crack resounded from the hall, followed by what sounded like a growl from Walter, who'd apparently tired of stringing double-helix popcorn garland in the living room.

"Walter?" Peter called. "You okay over there? Television talking to you again?"

Another crack echoed, closer, and suddenly Walter appeared in the front hall, waving a broom and wearing what might have been a fur coat, once, before the Great Moth Wars of 1946. "Bring me the women and children!" Walter howled, cracking the broom once again against the wall. It was their kitchen broom, white plastic from Target, but clearly to Walter it was much more.

"Ah," Peter said calmly. "Nice to see you haven't forgotten old traditions, Walter." To Astrid and Olivia, he muttered, "Brace yourself. I haven't seen this one since I was eleven."

"Are those _horns,_ Walter?" Astrid said, and indeed they were, shaped from tinfoil and tied on his head with the fishing line he was supposed to have been using for the popcorn.

"Peter," Walter boomed, "it is time!" He spread his arms wide like a king on a throne and came close enough to knocking the coffeemaker off the counter that Olivia dove to save it. "Time for a tradition to pass from father to son!"

"That's okay, Walter," Peter said. "You can keep it."

"What further use have I for rites of fertility?" Walter asked. Olivia's jaw dropped. Astrid's, too. Peter took a meditative breath. "None!" Walter answered himself. "None at all! It's time, Peter! Time to hand down Krampus' broom!"

 

 

"For an old man, your father has amazing stamina," Astrid whispered to Peter, as he hid the hard-won broom out of sight on top of the kitchen cabinets.

"Let's not use the word 'stamina' while I'm touching the giant phallic symbol, yeah?" Peter shot back.

"I call it as I see it," Astrid said, and diction aside, she was right. Walter had chased the two women around a house with a broom for ten full minutes, which was impressive especially considering the oxygen depletion caused by constantly beckoning, _Come on, Peter! This is how it's done! You keep the one you catch!_ Peter would have put a stop to it sooner, but he'd be damned if the women hadn't encouraged the chaos, screaming and running and doubling over with laughter.

"Take comfort in your Christmas Eve plans," he said, patting her wool-clad shoulder with a heavy hand, "that they will take you far, far away from this accursed place."

"Accursed sounds about right," Olivia said, sauntering in with a fresh glass of nog for herself. "Is the elder Bishop going to spring anything else on us tonight?"

"No, I think we'll be safe, now," Peter said, taking Olivia's drink from her hands and downing it in one go. "More liquid goodwill, anyone?"

Astrid bit her lip graciously. "I think it's about time for me to be moving on. Merry Christmas to all," she said, "and to all an uneventful night." She looked around. "Where did I throw my gloves...?" she murmured, then segued into, "Oh, Walter, _no_ ," when she saw them laying on the couch, stuck with a needle, having served as excellent full-hand thimbles for the stringing of Walter's garland.

"Your father had better have _very_ small hands," Astrid warned.

"There's no right answer to that," Peter said, after trying to think of one.

Olivia snorted. 

"I'm going to check the Beast," he grumbled.

 

The Beast, it turned out, needed more than a slow braise. Judging from its obdurate rawness, it could probably have withstood direct flame for about two hours without losing its red. In any event, Peter wasn't about to babysit a piece of meat all night. He paused in front of the oven for a minute, thinking, and then shut off the gas.

"How's the demon flesh?" Olivia asked him when he came up the stairs, passing her on her on her way to the shower.

"Outside in a snow bank," he answered frankly, "where it will stay until morning, because the roasting pan doesn't fit in the fridge." Olivia nodded as if this were normal bedtime discussion and padded off down the hall.

Peter drifted into their room. After the soft howl of shower water began in the walls, he went to their closet and took out a wrapped shoebox. The gifts he'd put for Olivia under the downstairs tree had only been half of what he'd wanted to give her. But then, the downstairs tree was only half of the tree.

When he went to put the shoebox under their private treetop, he found something already there, inscribed to him.

 

Olivia came back, t-shirted and putting off a fine layer of steam, to find Peter cozied up on the braided rug, reading and waiting for her.

"Thought it might be Christmas officially, by the time you got out of the shower," he teased, without looking up from the page.

"Saw Santa out the window. I think I distracted him," she said, salacious and still tipsy.

"I'll bet you did," Peter said. "You cost some kids in Alaska their shiny new bikes." He raised an arm to deflect the answering snap of her towel toward his head before she hung it on the bedpost. She spent a few minutes combing out her hair before turning to look at him again.

"So," she said, finally acknowledging, with a glance, the box on the floor by Peter's hip. "Is this an ambush?"

"Is that what they call gifts these days?"

"Only the ones you wait to give in private."

"Huh," he said, reaching for the thing she'd left with his name on it. "Like this?"

She narrowed her eyes.

"I promise," he said, dog-earing his page and closing his book, "no awkward sweaters. No socks. Definitely no underwear. So come down here." He made room on the rug, putting his offering to her out as a lure. She hesitated only a moment before dropping into a comfortable kneel on the other side of the rug. "Don't worry," he assured her, "I got you something you asked for."

 

 

He liked her gift, a lot. She laughed while he put it on over his t-shirt, which, being another t-shirt, was a tight fit. A deft Picard Maneuver smoothed the front so he could see the print: _Enthalpy Fairy_.

"You had this made?" he said, then answered his own question. "Of course you did. Obviously you did." He brushed his palm affectionately over the words, a movement Olivia tracked as it mapped the dip of his sternum. Inordinately touched, Peter felt mild shame about the thing he'd wrapped for _her_. She'd unwrapped it already - not being the type of person to take five minutes trying not to rip the paper - and it was sitting in her lap, warmed by the cup of her hands. It was a personal gift, too, but not in the same way.

"I was going to get you the full NOVA library on DVD," he said, "but they don't actually make a set - you have to get the episodes individually, and they're, like, thi-"

"Peter," she said, holding up the Walternator's newly-minted missing piece with a relaxed wrist, "this is great."

"Yeah?" he said suspiciously. "I feel like it's not really a gift, since I broke the first one."

"It's the thought that counts," she said. Peter shook his head, silly with chagrin. "No, really," she said.

"At risk of denigrating that thought," he said, "I have one _little_ request to make."

Olivia's fingers tightened around the metal.

"I know I said I'd back off with you and the tests. And I will, I really will, I swear," he promised. "But if you could - if you would, just-"

"Keep thinking about that thing you wanted me to keep thinking about?" she finished.

He did something determined with his jaw. "Yeah," he said. "That."

Olivia took in his head-down apprehension, then pushed to her feet. "You know," she said, pointing to Peter's new favorite t-shirt, "there was a card with that." Without explication, she left him on the floor and tucked herself into bed, head turned away from the tree and from him.

Peter let her settle into the mattress until the creaking stopped. _A card._ He looked the treetop over, and found it between some inner branches, camouflaged by the dark green of Walter's stationery. There were only three words written on the interior slip of paper, but Peter read them for longer than comprehension required. When he joined her in bed, she didn't open her eyes and he didn't ask her to. He fell asleep smiling, her card tucked into his bed-table drawer, the words embossed in pen: _I'll try it._


	34. December: DQ

### DQ

They were piled in the station wagon. Walter was driving and Peter sat shotgun, ready at any moment to make a move for the wheel. Olivia inhabited the back seat like a dog without balance, her face pushing through the armrest gap to see the roads fly by under their headlights, the great wonders of the suburban world flashing on either side of them in neons and fluorescents. The moon floated in the windows, suspended and unmoving. By mutual unspoken agreement, Walter was the first to spot the Dairy Queen sign.

"There it is!" he cried, gunning the engine to hit fifty on the two-lane road before Peter could say "whoa, _whoa, Walter!_ " and push the dash uselessly with both hands. Olivia just laughed and Walter glanced back at her briefly, his eyebrows up and his smile gleeful.

"Eyes on the road," Peter ordered, but his head was turned, too, his ears pressed into the headrest so he could see her. Everything about the car reminded him of being a child, except for Olivia. But her clean face peering at him through the interior -- it was good. It fit.

Walter made the turn into the parking lot without any near-misses. Nonetheless, when he killed the engine, Peter took the keys stealthily from the ignition and hid them in his pocket.

"What'll it be, Walter?" he asked, ever the master of distraction.

"I need to look at the board," Walter told him as he left the car, wandering quickly toward the incandescent glow of the counter.

"That board hasn't changed since 1973," Peter called.

"Nonsense, Peter," Walter called back, his voice fading.

Peter watched his father study the menus through the glass. 

Olivia sidled up next to Peter, carrying Walter's coat over her arm.

"What can I get for you?" he asked her, thumbing his wallet from his back pocket. When she said _vanilla cone_ he stopped.

"You did see the sign, right?" He raised an eyebrow. "This is _Blizzard_ country," he said. She sighed exaggeratedly and went after Walter. 

It wasn't ice cream weather. There was no line at the window, and the girl at the counter seemed surprised to see anybody. She had books out next to the register, doing her homework. Walter pulled his leather-elbowed cardigan around his body as he ordered something even colder than the wind, and when Olivia reached him she put his coat around his shoulders.

When the teenage hand came out from the sliding window with a lidded cup, the intense lighting made the plastic glow. Walter's voice carried faintly, enough that Peter heard him say, _I'm with my son,_ and Olivia say, _I've got it._ Walter turned to him from across the lot with his Peanut Buster Parfait clutched in a nest of napkins.

"Peter!" he shouted, "the spoons are still red!"

 

 

They all sat on the same cherry-dipped bench, eating ice cream in December, shivering and loving it. The last and hardiest of the autumn bugs batted the lights.

"Why didn't Astrix come?"

"As _trid_ had other plans, remember?" Peter didn't say the word 'date'. Walter was pensive, hugging his scraped-clean cup in his hands.

"I would like to bring her something," he said finally, his diction stiff as meringue. Peter considered it as he licked his spoon.

"That's nice, Walter, but we're not going to see her tonight." _Lick_. "Besides, anything you get her would be completely melted by the time we get back." Walter hummed, thinking.

"I believe I know of a way," he said. "I'll need thirty cents."

Peter held out three dollars, because he didn't need to see Walter's stumbling canter as he came back to say, _Son, I may have miscalculated,_ with his hand outstretched. Something about it might break his heart, a little.

"Inflation," he said.

 

Walter rushed back toward the bench with a paper bag in hand. "Let's go!" 

"Right now?" Peter eyed the rest of his Blizzard. Walter nodded and changed course for their car in the lot. Peter gave Olivia a look.

"Cheers," she said, extending the stub of her cone to tap his paper cup. Then she threw her head back and crammed the whole thing in her mouth. " _This_ ," she managed, like a snake with its jaws around a gerbil, "is why you get a _cone_."

"That's disgusting," Peter sighed. Olivia wiggled her eyebrows and jogged off after Walter. Peter rolled his eyes and took one last bite, chucking the remainder into one of the battle-worn trash cans as he followed Walter and Olivia to the car.

"I'm afraid I won't be driving us home," Walter said, veering for the rear door.

"That won't be a problem, Walter." Peter already had the keys out. As Olivia ducked into the front seat, Walter cranked down the rear window.

"Walter..." Olivia craned her neck to look back at him. "What are you doing?"

"Never you mind, dear," he said. Peter whipped his head over his shoulder as he started the car. Walter had his hand out the window, dangling the bag in the cold.

"Walter, it's forty degrees!"

"Which means," Walter said, trying to find the most comfortable awkward position, "that if you drive above twenty miles per hour the wind chill will be below freezing."

"Oh god," Peter griped, but Olivia was already turning the heat up as high as it went. They both winced in unison: the first tepid blast of heat in the station wagon always smelled like rotten bananas and Walter had never really explained why. "This is a great way to lose your fingers," Peter warned toward the back seat.

"Don't scare him," Olivia hushed, but Walter was already coming back with ' _be that as it may...'_ Peter pulled out of the parking lot, heading for home until Walter insisted they stop at the lab first.

 

 

The car eased to a stop in the turnaround in front of the Kresge building. Meager gas lamps and streetlights gave the old red bricks an orange cast, and with the heat still full-force on his face Peter felt like he was inside a toaster.

Walter's hand wasn't the frozen claw it should have been, thanks mostly to Olivia taking turns holding the Dilly Bar out in the cold. As Walter unbuckled himself, she kept her hand over the heat vent, almost recovered from her last stint.

"I'll be right back," Walter said. He climbed out of the car and hurried up the steps, through the great doors and out of sight. Olivia bent back over her seat to close the door he'd left wide open, then went right back to flexing her fingers over the hot air, working the pink back in.

"Give me that hand," Peter said, in the rough, low voice he used in the dark, or when he was tired, or when it was quiet. Olivia didn't feel like giving it. She knew he'd just make some kind of deal about being cold, try to warm her up. He'd try to give her attention, but with the sugar and chill she just wanted to sit and be quiet. Not _unhappily_ quiet; just...quiet. But he was holding his hand out for hers, waiting, so she gave in.

He didn't do anything she'd expected. He just pulled a little, taking her hand steadily toward his ribs, and her shoulders followed her arm followed her hand, and when she was close enough, he kissed her. It was residually sweet, recombinant cherry and chocolate. There was no demand, no lascivious offer. He was just there, his face against hers, and then he wasn't, and she was left hanging in the air over the armrest while he had already settled back in the driver's seat. The glimmer bloomed around him, a symptom of her surprise.

"...but not bad," Peter said quietly, eyeing her.

She blinked back at him. He flicked off the heat.

"Unexpected," he said, and it was the perfect echo of her thoughts, "but not bad." He smiled and looked out through the windshield. Late-studying students crossed the quad, laden with books. "Good," he whispered. He still had hold of her hand.

 

 

Walter made his way to Astrid's desk in the dark. Gene mooed.

"It's all right," Walter whispered.

He fumbled to find a pencil, with which he wrote ' _for Astrid'_ on the paper bag without thinking too hard about it. He reordered the folded-down top, creasing it neatly. He centered the logo. Almost as an afterthought he added, _from Walter._ And with that he left the ice cream bar in its bag, meticulously arranged on the desk for her to find in the morning.


	35. December: Scrabble

### Scrabble

It's hard not to think about a person who's just kissed you. Olivia was finding it impossible, even with the distraction of Scrabble. Actually, it was more Calvinball than Scrabble: the English language didn't have enough quirks for Genius & Son, so there were etymological allowances and three valid dictionaries and a parliamentary system for ratifying yet _more_ dictionaries. Olivia was learning that anything with printed text could be considered a dictionary for these purposes, including (but not limited to) a road sign that Walter had seen once on a trip to Illinois.

"You're not seriously going to vote that in," she snapped at Peter, who already had his hand halfway up in the air.

"I was on that trip," he said feebly. "They _did_ have it spelled 'sanwichs'."

"Peter, it's a _bingo_."

"Which would still put Walter thirty points behind you. I would also accept 'sammich,' as in, 'woman, get me a.'"

"Olivia, I'm just an old man," Walter whined: a bird faking a broken wing.

"Keep trying that crap with me, Walter," she challenged him.

"You'll still beat him," Peter assured, as Walter muttered _don't be so certain,_ and Olivia weighed it over a handful of candied nuts that she grabbed from the center of the table.

"Okay," she said. "Okay, fine. And when you tally it up, Walter, throw in an extra five points because I care."

Walter hummed in pleased surprise. "Don't mind if I do," he said, writing high double-digits under his name on the scorecard.

"As a peace offering," Peter said, turning the board to himself, "I swear to devote myself wholeheartedly to blocking him from the triples for the rest of the game." Olivia rolled her eyes and got up for another beer, but she was over it by the time she got to the fridge. Cheater or not, watching Walter try furiously to get ahead was almost (but not quite) enough to distract her from thinking about Peter, who had kissed her in a car after Dairy Queen.

If Peter were thinking about it too, he gave little sign. He kept laughing at Walter's non-entendres and aiming snide comments wherever they'd hit, but for a guy who rearranged his tiles endlessly, he kept scoring on the wrong side of par.

 

 

Long after Walter had accepted defeat and gone upstairs for a little Ayn Rand before bed, Peter and Olivia remained at the table, talking about nothing and arranging the Scrabble tiles into nonsense words. As the tiles ran out and the words became less funny, Olivia found other things to play with: a pen to tap, beer bottles to line up, and the scorecard to fold and unfold until it started to drive Peter crazy.

"So," he said, once she'd torn the scorecard to tiny, congruent pieces. "What is it?" 

Olivia took a drink. She was still nursing the beer she'd started on her penultimate turn, the one where she'd been forced to play something vulgar in order to retake the lead from Mr. Just-an-old-man. "What's what?" she asked.

"On your mind." His mouth quirked up in one corner, made him look like his father. She shook little ripples down the length of her hair.

"I don't know what you mean."

"You sure?" Peter had migrated from beer to scotch, neat, in one of the tumblers he liked to reserve just for the occasion of scotch. He rolled the glass, fingers on the rim, and Olivia caught a faint whiff of peat smoke across the table. "You realize you almost got beaten at your best game by a man who puts gumdrops in meatloaf."

"Walter's IQ _is_ , if I recall correctly, slightly higher than yours," she said pointedly. "So I'm not too ashamed of a close call now and then." Peter feinted with a hand over his wounded heart, and she smiled. "Besides, Memory is my best game." She touched a bottle in the row of bottles with her fingertip, debating whether it needed adjustment. "Nothing's wrong, Peter."

"Regardless," he insisted, "you never slip below twenty-point turns. You spent ten minutes lining up those bottles within a micron of straight. _And_ , you're drinking my IPA. Which you hate."

She looked at the label on her bottle. _Dammit_.

"You're distracted," he teased. He nudged some scattered tiles aside and rested his elbows on the table, making deliberate eye contact. Olivia would have broken it by sipping on her beer, but there wasn't a drop left. "And you're empty," he said, cuing off her longing glance at the bottle. He stretched stiffly up out of his chair. "Just in time. It's scotch o'clock."

"Really?" Olivia glanced up at Walter's owl clock. "I don't see it."

Peter studied the clock face (the face with hands, not tick-tocking eyes) as he took a second tumbler out from the cabinet. "Shame. A clock without scotch time is like a calendar without Mole Day," he sighed. Uncapping the scotch, he poured her a generous two fingers and set it in front of her. She didn't drink but waited for him to finish the drink the way he liked to do for her. True to form, he turned to the sink and ran the tap.

"Mole Day," Olivia said. "I remember Mole Day. That was back in October? The day Walter tried to get me to-"

"That'd be the one." Tepid water ran over Peter's hand, and he found the rhythm of the drips from his fingers such that he could bring his hand to her glass and let drops fall from his fingertips into her drink: one, two, three. Olivia watched the water run down his fingers to break the amber surface and realized, in a way she hadn't before, that this was a ridiculously sensual way to make a drink. "Bet you've never been so glad to have an eidetic memory," Peter said, and she looked up at him in shock because she didn't immediately see that he was talking about Mole Day.

"Right," she said. She took her glass abruptly enough that Peter's fingers grazed the rim. Her first sip was smoky and hot. She licked her lip where the scotch burned, and suddenly the kitchen was too small and too big. She either wanted to be close to him or very far away, and she chose one of the two. "Nova?"

"I have 'Night Creatures of the Kalahari' ready to go," he said.

"Cheers," she said, raising her glass, and he followed her into the living room.

 

 

Other than Peter's Mystery Science Theater-ing of the more melodramatic scenes, neither of them said a word to the other until the credits rolled. By then it was a time far enough removed from both night and day to exist in its own murky space. To Olivia, it felt like the woods in an unincorporated area of Vermont: that place Peter'd taken her to try to make her see that not everything of value was kept in a lab. 

The strange, glittering memory of being in that place with him recrystallized: the dark, the alone, the quiet. The feeling of the two moments - then and now - was so similar that she could almost smell the horses. She didn't know if he knew she thought about it, or if he thought about it, too, or if he'd kissed her at the Dairy Queen to push her further into the thing she'd started. But now that they were home again -- far away from the horses and the near-accident and the things she couldn't believe she did -- Olivia wasn't sure why she'd started it in the first place. She wasn't sure she'd intended to startanything.

She got up to change the video, trying to think superficial thoughts as the black cartridge was ejected into her palm. On her knees, she rifled through their pile of tapes and came up with the next in series.

"Mysterious Mummies of China?" she said, looking back over her shoulder.

"Sure," Peter said amiably, but his face was nine kinds of serious. Olivia hesitated.

"Peter-"

"I didn't kiss you because you kissed me." He said it, just like that. "I kissed you because I wanted to." Olivia dropped back onto her heels, letting her face turn away from him until the television glowed blue around her profile. Peter dropped his arm like an anchor over the back of the couch, proof that he wasn't going to make a move for her. "And before this quiet brooding turns into a spiral of awkwardness," he said, "I want to make it clear that, whatever the reason...it doesn't necessarily have to happen again."

"Yeah," she said, "Of course. I know." 

"So."

"So," she said, wishing he'd stop talking or that Walter would wander in half-naked, sipping from a coconut. In fact, she wished it so much that she was willing to float a thought for Peter to skim up: _Don't._ It stopped Peter in the middle of a breath, because he couldn't _not_ hear her when she tried that hard, but it wasn't fair. She'd asked him not to get into her mind, and now she was practically hand-feeding him her thoughts, and he couldn't ask for clarification lest he clearly be in breach of that cardinal rule. And he really wanted to know: don't _what?_ Don't talk about it? Or don't do it again?

Olivia sat awkwardly in place, waiting out their impasse, and it frustrated Peter beyond words. It reminded him of the work he'd used to do before he'd come to Fringe. Even then, his least successful negotiations had always been with silent opponents. He exhaled. 

"Do you even know why you don't want to talk about this?" he asked.

And, yeah, she knew. The reason was what she _didn't_ know: what she wanted from him, where she wanted it to go, and whether the bond she felt with him was a byproduct of their joint participation in the tests or the marker of something less fleeting. Her face must have reflected the full breadth of her uncertainty, because Peter took pity.

"Sorry," he said. "I'm tired; I'm just tired." He took his arm back from the couch, making a space for her that was free of him. "Mysterious mummies sound like all I can mentally handle right now." Waving his hand in a loose salute, he gave up trying to pursue anything for the night. "Roll tape."

Olivia hunkered over the VCR to feed in the tape then gratefully returned to her proprietary dent in the cushions. Peter gave himself a thirty-count before he looked at her again; he knew she was still feeling only tenuously comfortable because she wouldn't look back. So he did something that he hoped was familiar enough between them: he patted his knees.

She looked.

He patted them again.

She knew what it meant, knew what he wanted.

"Come on," he said gently. "As much as I respect and admire your impenetrable personal boundaries, you can't pretend I didn't cross this one _months_ ago." Olivia bit her lip. She always held back at the initial offer of something pleasant, always denied herself first; it was one of the only things he'd ever wanted to change about her. 

"Give 'em," he pushed, and despite all that Olivia _wasn't_ ready for, Peter could easily remember a time when he couldn't have spoken aloud about the way she liked to put her feet up on him, or to be touched or held at all. There was progress, and, he could hope, there would be more.

Reassuringly, her feet came to rest on his thighs as she lay back against the arm of the couch. He pulled a blanket out from behind their backs and threw it over their combined shapes, snugging it around her legs and letting his hands fold warmly over her quilted toes.

The mummies played out in campy, television-science glory while Peter and Olivia's fatigue made flypaper of the couch. By the time the show was over, there was no way they were getting up -- not for the meager reward of a mattress. Olivia clicked the television off and let the remote drop somewhere onto the floor.

Peter was almost asleep, his hands still around her feet -- which, in the absence of his calves, had kneaded his thighs half to death instead -- before she spoke, tugging him back awake.

"Peter," she whispered, "I like this."

If he weren't so tired, he'd tell her he did, too. Instead he squeezed her feet once, lightly, and closed his eyes again.

 


	36. December: New Year's Eve

### New Year's Eve

In her semi-recent history, Olivia had worn a dress only once (and even then, she'd been undercover). Her relationships hadn't required it: Lucas had preferred to see her in the clothes he'd just taken off (oxfords and boxers and, sometimes, a tie), and her relationship with John had lacked opportunities to wear more than a bedsheet. Between the two of them and her woman-in-black lifestyle, Olivia hadn't bought a dress in years.

But that didn't mean she didn't _own_ one. She did, in fact, and by 10pm on New Year's Eve she'd wrestled herself into it. It zipped up so tightly that sequins stuck out horizontally from the torque, and her embarrassment at nothaving worn a dress in years was eclipsed by the embarrassment of actually wearingone again. Which, by the way, was not her idea.

 

 

The day before New Year's Eve, Peter made breakfast, which was significant because it was the first meal since Christmas that didn't include remnants of Roast Beast. To celebrate, he produced a spread of their favorites (with a full stick of butter, all told). It was a ruse, completely and utterly, to plant the seeds that would become Olivia in her dress.

"I think we might be stuck with each other for New Year's," he opened, as Olivia unspooled syrup over the last bites of the last slab of french toast, "since I'm pretty sure neither one of us has any friends anymore."

"Is that a fact," she said.

"No offense."

Olivia rolled her eyes. Sponging up what syrup remained, she shoved her plate forward. "So what did you have in mind? Dungeons and Dragons while Walter watches Dick Clark?"

"Lucky guess. Traditionally, we whittle the D20s out of a cheese log." He put his elbows on the table, arms out, palms up. "The truth is," he said, "I haven't had a New Year's Eve since two thousand and eight that didn't involve making bags of frozen crabcakes for Walter every hour until midnight, and that's a pattern I need to break."

"Frozen pizzas instead?"

"Not gonna do it for me. I want a date. A real, adult date; who doesn't particularly like frozen crabcakes and who won't, under any circumstances, ask me to check public urinals for hidden cameras." Olivia's nose wrinkled. "And before you get your panties in a bunch," Peter went on, "let me explain that by 'date,' I mean swilling champagne and possibly pulling off a few bad dances. Unless you think you'd be unable to control yourself around a gentleman such as I am."

Olivia shook her head, hiding a smile behind her coffee.

"Okay," Peter said, "it wouldn't kill me not to dance. But the champagne is a must. And - I mean this as chastely as possible - you need a dress, because my plan's not gonna work if you look like Law & Order."

"Your plan? There's a plan involved?"

"There is."

"Is this 'plan' the directions to Chuck-E-Cheese written on the back of a napkin?"

"Do you _want_ it to be the directions to Chuck-E-Cheese written on the back of a napkin? Because I can make that happen; I know how much you like Skee-Ball."

"Peter-"

"Come on, have some faith,"he said. "Besides, it's me or Walter, and Walter's gonna want Dick Clark and swedish meatballs every sixth commercial break."

She surrendered. "So," she said. "A dress, huh?"

 

 

So, the dress.

It was red and shiny and sparkled like a franchise vampire: Rachel's style, not hers. It showed an uneasy amount of thigh and made Olivia play a zero-sum game with her hems: bottom down, top up -- she could go on all night.

For an hour, she occupied the upstairs bathroom and remembered how to get ready for a date, doing her hair and pulling out the bare-bones makeup she'd brought with her to the Bishop house. It was fun and surprisingly meditative, and as she experimented with eyeshadow she tried to come to terms with the absurdity of going out for New Year's with a man who insisted it wasn't a date, in _that way_ (even though he'd kissed her on the way home from Dairy Queen, and even though she'd kissed _him_ before that, in a field states away). 

She wanted to believe that none of it mattered, but when Peter knocked to hurry her, she lost her nerve and Q-tipped most of her smoky eyes away. Because it _wasn't_ a date, and she didn't want to look like she didn't know that. Nevertheless, when she emerged into the hallway in full pair-bonding regalia, Peter's reaction made the hairs rise on her bare arms. Maybe that's what Rachel had been going for all along.

"That'll work perfectly," was all Peter said, before skirting around her into the bathroom to shave.

 

 

At ten-thirty, Peter was walking Olivia into a private party (to which he certainly had no invitation) in a French restaurant on the South End that was spilling people like a busted piñata onto the sidewalks. It was, he assured her, all part of the plan.

"Here's how it works," he whispered as they exited the cab. "Nobody looks at someone who's looking for someone else. So, look for someone, and walk right in. Okay?" He pressed her forward through an effervescence of tinsel and cleavage so blinding that she forgot her role until he turned back and said, "Keep looking." 

Inside the restaurant, the name cards on the tables had already been abandoned; most were on the floor with kicked-off pairs of dress shoes and a few stampeded hors d'oeuvre. When Peter slid Olivia into a ravaged corner booth, nobody seemed to care.

"Relax," he said. "We're in." A waiter made a strategic pass at the table and left two flutes of champagne, one of which Olivia downed in a wash.

"This," she said, toasting herself with the empty glass, "is the weirdest thing I've done this week."

"Well that's saying something," Peter said. "Cheers."

 

 

Olivia's fourth champagne made her want to dance. 

Her fifth, though, made her want to disappear. It hit her like a wall: full stop, reverse, and all she wanted was a break from the driving dance music, a chance to un-spin her head. The revelry decoupled into noise and chaos and wasn't fun anymore. Peter seemed fine, still energized; Olivia wanted to slow him down because she was feeling lost underfoot, too slow to stay afloat, and also because there was something else about the moment: a delicate oversensitivity that came from being immersed in loud strangers and copious booze.

How Peter picked up on any of that, Olivia didn't know nor care, but he led her back to their booth in the corner and made a quiet decision that involved passing something from his coat pocket across the table. His lockpick. She took it. He pointed.

"Down the hall, up the stairs to your right. All the way up." He nodded encouragingly. "I'll be right behind you."

She didn't hesitate.

 

 

Peter came through the roof door twelve minutes after Olivia had jimmied it open. He stepped over her makeshift cinderblock doorstop and joined her at the railing at the roof's edge, claiming an adjacent spot. Five smells hung distinctly in the cold air: butter and char from the restaurant vents, exhaust from the streets, the ghost of Walter's 1970's cologne on his dinner jacket and Olivia Dunham's perfume. She'd worn perfume _._ Peter kept his smile to himself.

"Is climbing down the fire escape part of your plan?" she asked him. "Because I didn't bring the shoes for that."

"No. Not yet, anyway. Still, better up here than down there, right?"

"Much."

He held up a bottle. "I imagine you're probably off champagne until next New Year's, so I brought wine."

"Ugh," she recoiled, and he quickly let the bottle fall out of her line of sight. Maybe more alcohol hadn't been the best of ideas. "For later, then." Nestling the bottle in the cigarette butts and tar paper by his feet, Peter went silent with her, observing. 

Fancy people pooled below, hailing cabs and kissing each other and shouting. Tonight, Olivia looked like she could be one of them, but Peter could see in her eyes that she felt no kinship. She wasn't one of them, and she knew. Maybe the chasm between her experience and theirs had finally become impassable. Maybe she'd finally given up on normality. Maybe she shouldn't have had twelve minutes alone to drunkenly contemplate herself on the roof. But then, how else would Peter have had time to acquire the wine?

"So," she said, after a few minutes. "What happens when this ends?" 

The question didn't surprise him. It was clear she'd been thinking. "This," he said, deliberately dense, "as in tonight?"

"No, _this_. Fringe Division. The world ending, or not."

Peter sighed and turned his back on the rail, looking toward Boston's light-combed skyscrapers. "Champagne and you," he said, "are not so good together. I'll remember that for next time."

"It's not the champagne," Olivia said, which of course is what people say about the thing it usually _is,_ but in this instance Peter was willing to believe her.

"Okay," he said, and he thought about it before answering. "I guess one of two things happens: the world ends, or it doesn't. If it does, then this conversation would be irrelevant, so I assume you mean what happens if it doesn't. And I don't know. You tell me."

"I don't know. I know that I can't go back _there_ ," she said, hitching a shoulder toward the street, where a crapulous celebrant helped a woman with a broken heel into the backseat of a cab. "I can't even _talk_ to people anymore, not without feeling like I'm pretending to be someone else. Because you can't really tell people you're in a bad mood because you stuck an electrode through your neck to hallucinate in a tank for five hours; or, sorry, I must have taken too much LSD last night. My life is brain transfers and bug monsters and holes in the universe, and I-"

"-like it?" he finished.

"It's grown on me," she said, smiling tightly. "But that's kind of the problem. I think about the things we do and who that makes us, and I think about how I'm never going to be able to go back to being just a person again."

"As opposed to what?"

She shook her head. "I don't know." But she did know; he could see that. He offered it up for her.

" _More_."

She nodded. "Outside of the lab, what do I do with that? What are _you_ going to do with that?" Under the lipstick and blush, despite her clear concern, Olivia's face remained impassive. She watched windows, streetcorners, places where light shone. Peter could feel her attention on him, senses pointed like satellite dishes while her eyes played decoy. "Are you going to leave the FBI?" she asked.

"When I could go on wringing significant sums of money out of Uncle Sam?" he said. "Why would I?"

"You hate Boston."

"It's grown on me," he echoed.

"You'd have to take care of Walter if you stayed."

"He's my father." He shifted against the rail. "How about you?"

"What about me?"

"What are _you_ going to do when this is over?" he asked. "And don't give me that look; it's not a crazy question. The truth is that I'm more planted here than you are. I have Walter, I have a job, I have you _._ " He paused to gauge her reaction, which was deliberately nonexistent. "But you're the one living in my house, sleeping in my bed and playing Scrabble with my father. If anyone can get up and walk away, it's you. So tell me, where are _you_ going? What are _your_ plans when the world doesn't end?" She didn't answer. "Of course, if you don't have any," he said, "I'd ask you to consider sticking around. We could do this again next year. Make it a tradition, minus the fifth round of champagne." The dim flicker of Olivia's sidelong glance wouldn't have set a match on fire. She shivered. 

"You didn't think to bring a blanket, did you?" she asked. 

He hadn't, but he should have: she was in the dress he'd told her to wear, supplemented by a sweater thin enough to see through, standing on a rooftop in December. He had, however, a perfectly warm suit jacket, which he slipped off his shoulders and onto hers, hanging its lapels like an oxbow around her neck. She shivered once more and started to thaw, while Peter rested his elbows on the rail and tried to ignore the cold.

"Look," he said. "You're right; you're never going to be able to go back to being ordinary. You're always going to be more." If Olivia saw the compliment in that, she didn't show it. "But I'd count that as a good thing. I mean, look at all those people. How many of them have even one person that really understands them?"

She side-eyed him. "Tell me you're not trying to tell me how lucky I am to have you."

He paused with his mouth open.

"Peter..."

"No, okay, but listen, you _are_ lucky. You've seen things that people will never see. People have spent their lives wearing tinfoil hats and waving satellite dishes at the sky, trying to understand even a fraction of what you know. You have to see how incredible that is."

"I do. But I can't make a life out of that."

"There'll be other things."

"Like...?"

"I don't know. But it won't be those people you're talking about; it won't be book clubs and shopping. You're going to need brain transfers and bug monsters for the rest of your life just to keep things interesting."

"That still sounds like you're trying to tell me-"

"I knowwhat it sounds like. But I'm not saying you have to chase bug monsters with _me_. I'm saying that, someday, when this is over, if you find you need someone to chase bug monsters with, I'm going to be here. And so will Walter. You don't have to worry about trying to be normal, because I can guarantee you that the not-normal parts of your life won't be going anywhere without you." 

She seemed to accept that, or maybe she just didn't want to discuss it any further. Together they waited for the next thing to happen, which was that Olivia lifted the lapel of Peter's coat to her nose and sniffed.

"This...this is Walter's coat, isn't it," she said. 

"Strawberries?"

"Weed."

"Yeah. That, too. Sorry, I thought the dry cleaners would be more thorough. At least they got the gum out of the pockets." He glanced at her apologetically but her eyes were shining wet in the reflected city pink. He wanted to ask why, but knew she'd box up like a turtle the second he mentioned it.

"I feel like I'm at the prom with the high school dropout," she said, only the slightest husk to her voice. "Locked out on the roof, wearing your dad's jacket...and I assume you stole that bottle of wine."

"I put it on the tab."

" _Your_ tab?"

He shrugged. "Somebody's tab."

She sniffled and swiped at her nose with the back of her wrist, trying to laugh at him while she did it but falling short. "You're right," she said, sounding less stable than she had all night, "I don't know how I could live without this kind of excitement in my life." Sniffling again, she hung her head, and he didn't care how boxed up she'd get: he put his hand on her back and rubbed gently.

"It's okay," he whispered. "There's always accounting."

She laughed halfheartedly and recovered herself under the warm friction of his palm, and when her breathing steadied he asked a question before he could stop himself:

"You ever gonna kiss me again?"

Her head turned like a snapped mousetrap. "What?"

Peter didn't amend the statement, but didn't ask again, either. Olivia pulled Walter's jacket tighter around her shoulders and looked back over the railing, unable to focus on anything below but unwilling to look back at him.

"Peter, don't," she said, and it made him viscerally unhappy. Drunk avoidance was the worst kind. He turned to overhang the rail with her again, parallel bodies, and they watched a rowdy party through an apartment window across the way.

"'Livia," he said, "I get that you don't have the advantage of knowing my mind. And maybe there's nobody whose mind you really want the privilege of knowing. But I think it would help you to know mine, at least about this, insofar as if it were up to me-" He stopped speaking. She was looking at him again, and the look on her face was a little drunk. A little sad. A little afraid. 

"What?" she said. "If it were up to you, what?"

Peter couldn't say what he'd wanted to say. Certain levels of sincerity weren't appropriate for moments of deep fragility, and Olivia looked positively crystallized by alcohol and angst. "Nothing," he finished. She nodded. Despite the coat, she shivered again. 

"Peter...let's open that wine."

 

 

True to Peter's word -- the word being 'chaste' -- they didn't kiss at midnight. They wouldn't even have known it was midnight, except that Auld Lang Syne found its way to the roof. They passed the bottle until the cold got to them.

 

Home again, stumbling through the front door at one in the morning, Peter's first order of business was to turn off Walter's music before the neighbors called the cops.

"How long do you think Hungry Like The Wolf's been on repeat?" he mumbled, messing with the stereo.

"Probably since the babysitter took off," Olivia said. She hung her coat on the hall rack and let her hair down. "An hour or two?"

"That's if that poor kid lasted half as long as he said he would."

"That 'poor kid' was a grad student."

"In the _humanities_ ," Peter said. "Walter probably ate him alive." He draped blankets over something on the couch that Olivia guessed was Walter himself, then started picking spent noisemakers off the ground.

"Leave it," she said, exhausted. "Come to bed."

"I'll be in bed by the time you're ready," he said, picking up a cardboard horn bespoiled by cheese dip and holding it up to her. "If this stuff dries on the floor, my life will only become more difficult."

 

 

As promised, he was in bed before her, almost asleep when she crawled in next to him.

Laying her head sideways on the pillow gave Olivia an unpleasant off-balance feeling _(champagne, never again)_ and it helped if she kept her eyes open. Forced to stare at something, she chose Peter.

That thing he'd said on the roof, that she was the one who could leave if the world didn't end...maybe that was true. And maybe it was also true that she'd need brain monsters and bug transfers -- no, ugh, reverse that -- for the rest of her life. And then what? Was he right about everything? 

It was true that Peter was there for her. She knew that. He'd been drugged and shocked and Waltered but he was still there with her, warming sheets and queuing up NOVAs and taking her out so she wouldn't be alone. He'd asked if she were ever going to kiss him again, and was she? Suddenly, she wanted to.

"I can't sleep with you staring at me," Peter mumbled, eyes still closed.

"I'm not staring at you."

"Yes you are."

"No, I'm not," she said, but stopped because her phone had started to ring. "Walter wouldn't call from downstairs, would he?" she asked, groping the bedside table.

"Wouldn't put it past him." But Peter's phone had started ringing, too.

"Dunham," Olivia said, as Peter growled, "Bishop." Of the two of them, it was hard to say who sounded more wrecked. It was Broyles for her, Astrid for him. Broyles didn't bother with an apologetic introduction the way Astrid did, so Olivia was out of bed, pulling a suit from the closet before Peter even hung up.

"On New Year's? Really?" he grumbled, tossing his phone into her vacated spot. "I hope they're not expecting my finest work."

"Broyles didn't sound too happy about it, either," she said. "He said it looks bad."

"Coffee?"

She thought about it. "Yeah," she said, stuffing her ID into her pocket. "Lots."


	37. January: What Does it Look Like?

# January

 

 

### What Does it Look Like?

Peter was staring at the ceiling in the dark. The bed was warm despite the window he kept cracked at night, insulated by a fat stack of blankets, quilts and afghans. They were heavy, and the pressure relaxed him in tandem with the cold river of air. Streetlights made familiar shapes on the ceiling, sweeping across the walls when cars drove by. Olivia was next to him, curled on her side with her hand on his chest under the quilts. Everything felt subdued, from the blue and yellow lights to the faint click-click-hum of the furnace turning on intermittently in the basement. The forecast called for snow, but just a dusting.

"What does it look like?" he asked, his voice as hushed as the furnace and almost as low.

"What does what look like?" she said.

He turned his head on the pillow to face her and drew a wavy line around his face in the air. The Glimmer. She frowned at him, but he looked back at her steadily and covered her hand with his, keeping it close to him at a moment he thought she might reflexively draw away.

"I try not to see it," she said, her voice dropping. Peter pressed her hand neutrally, and she rolled onto her back. Peter let their clasped hands fall to the mattress between them, a compromise for not letting go. She kneaded her feet into the mattress, preempting any worries that might crop up with the repetitive motion. After a while the kneading stopped. At this time of night, in this room, Peter measured time in cars passing, and Olivia's was a two-car worry. They were far-apart cars. He invented their routes, the back roads and highways, as their sounds faded away.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said finally, when he lost the motor of the second car completely. He said it with conviction, but the fear he was trying to wash away had crossed his mind many times since the night she'd confessed it to him.

"I know," she said. He knew better to argue, though it amazed him that she could lie to him after she'd realized he had nearly unfettered access to her mind. He would tell her that, too, if he weren't sure she'd turn over and pretend to have _just_ fallen asleep.

They lapsed back into silence. A car passed, just one, with halogen headlights, and the rectangles they made on the ceiling were lavender. It bothered Peter not to know how he looked when she looked at him. After four months, he thought he would know. He thought he'd be able to see the glimmer for himself, but it hadn't happened for him yet. Maybe it just wasn't going to be part of his repertoire. He would hate to have to accept that.

"'Liv," he said. It was rare that he shortened her first name by anything but the leading 'o', but the stillness in his bedroom was so encompassing that he didn't feel right with any more sounds than were absolutely necessary. She wormed her hand out of his, flipped her hair away from the back of her neck and let it spread over the rest of her pillow. He watched her with the comfort that it was just her _way_ to be distant, sometimes. It was who she was, and he could wait forever and it wouldn't change.

"What does it look like?" he whispered.

There was a long silence from her side of the bed. He didn't know if she was going to answer, and that meant _she_ didn't know if she was going to answer. Her hand came back to him under the covers; he rubbed his thumb along her palm and kept quiet. Sometimes she would answer in thought when she didn't want to confront her answers out loud, which was perhaps the only cowardice of which he could ever accuse her.

Eventually she turned back on her side. Her cool feet pushed under his warm calves. Eyes open, body relaxed. "It's beautiful," she said. Her sincerity was like another light on the ceiling, making its short arc before disappearing. He'd never get her to repeat it, not in a million years, but she smiled wide as her eyes closed and he had no doubt she meant it.

"Yeah?" he pushed, grinning sleepily in the dark, but she was already pretending to have _just_ fallen asleep.

 


	38. January: Camelopardalis

### Camelopardalis

Olivia heard the car from two blocks away. She heard things clearer in winter; it helped that she had the window open the way Peter had persuaded her to prefer.

The door downstairs opened and shut. Peter fixed himself something in the kitchen that was probably a sandwich because it took him all of five minutes to eat before he was climbing the stairs. The silhouette he made in the doorway was six feet tall, give or take.

"Jesus it's cold in here," he said, like it was all one word. His reaction to the cold made Olivia feel even warmer under the lasagna of blankets. She nuzzled her pillowcase contentedly.

"What was it tonight?" she mumbled.

"Constellation stories," he said, keeping his voice close. "Orion, the hunter. Gemini, the twins. Camelopardalis, the giraffe." She didn't respond but he saw her snuggle deeper into her pillow to hide the smile she didn't want him to have. A giraffe reference didn't deserve it.

"C'mere," she said, still muffled. He tossed his sweater over a chair, more than happy to go where she asked him. It was a strange thing they'd developed, the intimacies he built around her. He loved her, though he'd never said it, and she objected less and less as time went on. He made it easy for her, backing off in daylight and returning every night. It was still the damnedest feeling when he crawled into bed with her, warm feet and soft cotton and metronome heart beating steadily against her back. And what could she do? She wanted him there. It felt normal at this point, the only expected outcome to their situation. It would be stranger to have the wall between them, as useless as air, while he was as close to her consciousness as she was.

And Peter was human in bed: more human than genius, than lab rat, than dimensional changeling. Sometimes it surprised her how much she needed the reminder that the skin that glimmered still had texture and scent. He liked to face her, their heads sunk halfway into their pillows, and spend long minutes in silence: Peter in her head, not prying, just looking. Resting. His face would be wiped clear and Olivia would realize how strenuous it was for him to ignore her the way she asked him to. She almost felt bad about continuing to ask but the idea of being _observed,_ every thought seen and laid open for speculation, was too much for her. She needed him to keep that distance, and he did, mostly. She dropped the prohibition for the moments before they slept, because more than anything else he seemed exhausted, and maybe he deserved the break.

Tonight, his energy wasn't so low, at least not that she could glean from his even gait and easy smile. He came over to the bed and dropped down beside it.

"Peter," she whispered, looking solemnly at him. He crouched peacefully on the floor, his face level with her pillow.

"Hey, sweetheart," he whispered. He stroked her hair. There was a comfortable silence into which she purred her approval of his heavy hand on her head. He was happy to hear it. It was still almost foreign to him that she would enjoy it, much less let him know.

"Take me sometime," she said.

"To the planetarium?"

She nodded. He hesitated and she guessed why, but she wasn't intending to take that vital loneliness away from him.

"Someday," she said. "Just for fun." He was grateful she didn't want to come on his evening trips. He didn't want her to see that, because it would mean there was something he didn't want to share. He shared so much _of_ her, most of it by no choice of her own, that he felt guilty keeping anything for himself. Yet the planetarium and all its secret darkness washis, and he wasprivate, and maybe that was just the way things were.

Still.

"Yeah," he said. "We'll go." He nodded, for his own fortification. Olivia closed her eyes. Peter sat there for another quiet minute, placing and replacing ribbons of her hair across the rest, before he left to get ready for bed. By the time he got back she was asleep, and he did his best not to wake her as he got under the covers and began the long process of warming his side of the bed.


	39. January: Planetarium

### Planetarium

Peter came home depressed. Olivia could tell because he'd had a drink before coming home, and because he'd had a drink in the kitchen before he came upstairs. She could smell whiskey and rum; whiskey they had in a kitchen cabinet and rum they didn't. She hoped she wouldn't see the car parked outside in the morning; better that he had left it parked behind whatever bar it was.

"They're dismantling the Carl Zeiss," Peter said as he fell into bed beside her. He said it with heavy finality, like it was something he'd known for a while but had not quite accepted. "If you want to go, we have to _go_."

"The what?" she asked sleepily. It was late, or so late it was early, whichever. Did they know a Carl? She couldn't think of one.

"The projector," he said. He sighed. Drifts of alcohol across the pillow. She realized he was talking about the planetarium. At least he hadn't spent the _entire_ night drinking: just the entire night, minus the run time of a planetarium show. "How about tomorrow?" he said.

"Yeah," she said. She would have said _yeah_ to anything. She was half-dreaming about being served pancakes by a bear in a bacon skirt, as far as Peter could tell. Sometimes he wondered about the parts of her brain he _couldn't_ see. "Sorry about Carl," she murmured.

 

 

The Sunday was a beautiful Sunday, and they made a trip of it, even Astrid. Walter had a moment of grief over his breakfast plate when Peter told them why they were going.

"I have a great fondness for that projector," he said quietly, looking through his raisin toast while his forehead creased with worry. "Peter," he said, and Peter thought there might be a story forthcoming. But all Walter said was, "I think we may be out of apple butter." 

The museum was crowded, but that was how Peter liked it. The planetarium felt colder than usual, and he chalked that up to the bittersweetness of a last time. Soon there would be a smooth, high-tech rock in place of his bulky, barbell-shaped familiar. Still a Zeiss, but a _new_ Zeiss. The _Starmaster_. A good name for exercise equipment, maybe, but not for a planetarium projector. It was too glamorous, too new. What was wrong with artifacts?

Since he'd come back to Boston -- rather, since he'd decided to stay -- Peter'd been feeling more and more like an artifact, himself. For whatever reason, his work with Olivia and Walter was exhausting. He no longer had the energy nor desire to broker dangerous deals in Farsi or gamble with dangerous sums of money in Boston back rooms; he took stability where he could find it. 

 

 

Walter ended up between Peter and Olivia, speculating every thirty seconds that the lights were starting to dim and the show was about to start. Astrid took a seat near the aisle; she'd brought someone Peter recognized from the physics department, a woman with fire-engine hair. They'd stuffed their jackets to capacity with smuggled boxes of candy and bottles of Diet Coke, and Peter could hear the rattle of _verboten_ Raisinets in their yellow box as it passed between them. It was odd for Peter to be in the hemispheric room with his makeshift family around him instead of strangers, but it was growing on him.

When the lights darkened and the Zeiss lit up, all its pinprick holes glowing, Olivia understood why Peter came. The ceiling disappeared, the walls might not have existed, and the narrator's voice bounced off the dome and filled the room, omnipresent. And as she stared up at the night sky she heard a whisper beside her, Walter's voice matching the narrator word for word.

 

 

After the show, Astrid and her accomplice pulled a vanishing act while Peter set an alarm on his cell phone and put it into Walter's pocket.

"When this alarm goes off, meet us by the Van de Graaff," Peter said. "If you need me, press 2 to call Olivia's phone."

"Yes, yes, enough," Walter said. "Go enjoy your date!"

"Walter..." Peter decided not to bother protesting. "Just don't set anything on fire."

"Certainly not on purpose," Walter said as he wandered off.

"Peter," Olivia said once Walter was out of range, "you're just going to let him go?" Peter watched his father disappear down a full hallway.

"He knows this place better than I do," Peter said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that looked like another cell phone. "Besides, he's microchipped. How far can he go?"

 

 

Antennae extending, Peter led the way and they found Walter (finally) in the cafeteria. He was behind the pass-thru window, talking to a white-hatted chef in a sea of polished aluminum.

"Oh, _Peter_ ," Walter said when he saw them, "Thank goodness you're here. Someone is trying desperately to get in touch with you." He pulled Peter's phone out of his pocket and handed it through the window. _Alarm!_ was still flashing on the front panel. Peter shook his head and turned it off.

"Ready to go, Walter?" he said. Walter held up something that looked like a neon green hockey puck on a plate.

"Flan and green jello sauce! My old favorite!" he announced. "Peter, you remember Geoffrey, don't you?" Geoffrey reached under the counter and proffered a second plate.

"Your dad told me you were here," he said. "I whipped up a 'Peter, Peter, Dino Eater' special." Peter stared at the dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets arranged around an upright mountain of fries and barbecue sauce. Geoffrey watched Peter's face carefully. "Guess you're a little old for that now," he said, the plate hovering in the air as Peter hesitated. There was something jarring in being remembered. It fought against the anonymity he'd constructed in the planetarium, escaping the notice of hundreds of people nightly. 

Olivia did not hesitate. She took the plate when she saw that Peter couldn't.

"Here I thought the only one who remembered me was Big Eddie," Peter mumbled, lamely caustic, but nobody heard him because Olivia was talking.

"Peter didn't tell me he had a personal chef, here," she said, making a Stegosaurus disappear. Geoffrey leaned against a bare table, swept his toque from his white-grey curls and set it beside him like a tall marshmallow.

"Yeah, poor kid. I felt bad for him," he said. "Or maybe jealous. One little boy in the middle of all those girls." Peter glanced at Olivia with a pained little smile. She gave him a wide one in return that clearly indicated that her interest was proportional to his uneasiness. Of course, he would expect nothing less from her.

"We were all t _en years old_ ," he said, "so..."

"Olivia!" Walter said, delighted to be driving the tour bus through Peter's past. "Would you believe that I taught overnight programs at this museum?" His flan jiggled with his excitement. "Hundreds of young scouts-"

"- _girl_ scouts," Peter interjected.

"-descended upon this institution like locusts in search of knowledge to devour!" He paused and stabbed up a bite of flan. "And snack foods; they were insatiable, despite their size."

"Walter blew off his eyebrows once mixing Potassium Chlorate and sugar," Peter said, "and I guess news travels fast in Girl Scout circles because there was always a stampede to get to his station."

"Apparently that demonstration was not on an approved list."

"Walter would bring me along to these things. They were overnights, so it was just me and two hundred ten-year-old girls at three in the morning," Peter explained. "I don't know how many sleepovers you went to as a kid, but those girls-- it was like feeding Mogwai after midnight."

"Peter was so bright," Walter said. "Once he figured out the security codes _,_ _he was_ impossible to find."

"Well, Walter's idea of me 'helping' was making me the last link in a static electricity demonstration," Peter said. "So you can imagine why I spent my time in the planetarium instead. Plus, the controls were like a video game."

"Then he'd come see me for--" Geoffrey pointed to the plate that Olivia had almost wiped clean. "You know."

"And a game of chess," Peter said. "Stiffest competition I've ever had," Peter told Olivia. "You know he used to play in the parks for money. He's a shark." Geoffrey was looking a little smug. Peter was feeling a little weak but couldn't pinpoint why. Olivia held the last little Tyrannosaur up to his face.

"Saved you the best one," she said and Peter had no choice but to take it: a bright, breaded-and-fried point on the faint path of his own timeline. He ate it, enjoyed it, and let himself be reminded that a space for him had been kept in this universe after all these years.

 

 

They met up with Astrid and Jane at the Van de Graaff an hour late but the women didn't seem to mind. Having watched back-to-back IMAX films all day, they were wasted on sugar and caffeine, still popping Swedish Fish and Runts and watching wide-eyed as the electricity arced from globe to globe.

"Olivia, did you know that this Van de Graaff generator was designed by Van de Graaff himself?" Walter said.

"Weren't they all?" she asked as Peter led her into a seat. Walter shook his head and was about to explain when a fantastic crackle of lightning stole his attention.

 

 

They were wandering through the lobby on their way out, the Daedalus hanging overhead, and Astrid said, "Walter, you still up for poker night?" which tipped Peter's brain right off its axis. Walter kept right on strolling.

"Of course," he said. "I've even pressed my shirt." Jane whispered something to Astrid, who checked her watch.

"Pick you up at seven?" Astrid asked. "You can come for snacks." Walter clapped lightly.

"At the Stop & Shop?" he asked.

"You know it," Jane said.

"Excellent. I _very much_ enjoy their snack aisle," Walter said. "So much transparent packaging."

Meanwhile Peter and Olivia were raising eyebrows at each other.

"Walter?" Peter said. "You gamble? For money?"

"Of course not," Walter said. "I am an excellent dealer." He looked back at his son with a bright smile. "I wear a visor!" Peter tilted his head like a baffled dog.

"You should see him at pub trivia," Astrid said. "He cleans up _._ "

"We have free beer at the Purple Shamrock 'til _March_ ," Jane chimed in.

"Besides, it's good for Walter to get out," Astrid said, patting Walter's shoulder. "Right?"

"Right!" Walter agreed, straightening up like a marcher in a parade.

Peter was dumbfounded. "Were you ever going to tellme about any of this?" Walter either didn't hear or pretended not to. He'd sidled up to Olivia and had started in about pineapple upside-down cake.

"You busy kids miss a lot sitting on that couch," Astrid said with a tiny smile. She walked off toward her car, pausing only to call back, "Don't let him have anything to drink before we pick him up."

Peter said, "What?" quietly into the air. She was too far away to hear, but Walter wasn't. "Why, Walter?" Peter asked him, a little more insistent. Walter had put on a shameful little face.

"Because then I tend to cheat."

 


	40. December: Casualties

### Casualties

The dimensional breach was sudden and violent, moreso than the other three that had surfaced in the week after New Year's. By the time Peter and Olivia got on scene, the office building was nested in a swiss cheese of interdimensional holes. Through Walter's Other-Side goggles it looked like an impossible maze, and from the 9-1-1 call, Olivia'd gathered that that was exactly what it was: forty-three people trapped inside by the time dispatch took the call.

Peter was the natural choice to go in after them, being impervious to the disintegrating effects of the rifts, but the com equipment wasn't so resilient. They sent him in with five backups, and it'd taken him under twenty minutes to destroy four of them. Now, switching out to the fifth, his radio silence was about to hit eight seconds, which was five more than he'd needed to switch out the last replacement. How long did it take someone to hook a bluetooth over their ear? Not eight seconds.

Olivia checked Broyles over her shoulder; he glanced up from his watch to frown at her. Ten seconds.

Then Peter's line crackled back to life, and if lesser agents and local police hadn't been listening in, Olivia might have said something half-furious about Peter being the slowest draw in the FBI.

"Sorry," his voice came through.

"What's the delay?" she demanded, terse, wanting him to understand that time stretched out when he went dark in a place where she couldn't go in after him.

"Sorry," Peter said again, less flip this time, hearing the thing in her voice that was more than impatience. "Walked through something I shouldn't have and fried another one. On the fifth set, now." He was careful not to say _last_.

"Are the goggles still working?" That, from Broyles, though Walter was also listening for the answer.

"Still working," Peter said. "I can see the holes fine; problem is they're moving. Getting kind of hard to avoid, actually."

Olivia circled in place. "We can give you more headsets the next time you come out," she said. He'd been out three times already; led tens of people through the minefield to safety like some Kevlar-heavy St. Bernard.

"Uh...no," he said. "No, look, I'm on the sixth floor; party was on the fourth? I don't see anybody else. I think we're done."

Broyles put an order through the intercom to the dump truck parked behind the cop cars, and suddenly the SWAT team was crawling over the edges like crabs from a bucket, hauling canisters of Walter's new prototype sealant, amber-1136.

"All right, then," Olivia said, off Broyles' nod, "come on out."

"Wait," Peter said, and Olivia's head ticked to the side. "I think...hold on. I hear something."

Broyles held a hand out at the SWAT team, who turned to stone behind him.

"Yeah," Peter said. "Definitely voices above me. I'm going up." A small silence, and then a muffled yelp, followed immediately by, "I'm fine, I'm fine. Sneaky little sonofabitch took out a piece of the floor."

Broyles took a turn looking worried. "You said the holes were moving," he said. "I take that to mean things are getting worse."

"Correct."

"Will that affect your ability to lead these people out?"

"I'm pretty sure anything I try will be more effective than leaving them up here to get ambered."

"Understood," Broyles said.

Olivia paced. She could hear Peter's breathing in her ear as he climbed the stairs. "So," he said, "what did you want to do for dinner?" Her eyes narrowed, not that he could tell. "I was thinking pizza, beer, my feet up-" his breath puffed, maybe as he dodged something "-on a table. Tell Broyles he's springing for extra topp-"

The building cracked -- it was the best way to describe the sound. Something big, strong and deep within the brick facade split like an axed tree, and the building's right side sagged. From the seventh floor, there were screams that even Olivia could hear. 

"Peter," Olivia demanded. If she pressed any harder on her earpiece, it would go right through her skull. " _Peter."_

"I'm fine," his voice buzzed. "Something's going on with the infrastructure. Girder, maybe."

"We can see that," she said. "Major structural damage. You have to get out."

"I- I will," he said. But he was distracted. "Ah, found 'em. There's three."

"You may be safe from the rifts, but if you end up under a wall..."

"I'm bringing them down."

 _Them._ Olivia frowned. They would slow him down. What if there wasn't time? The windows were blowing out in columns. "Leave them," she said, and Broyles' head jerked toward her.

"'Livia..."

"Leave them," she ordered again, choosing it, owning it.

"I can't."

Metallic sounds twisted down from the upper stories.

"I'm coming down," Peter said, and Olivia ripped off her headset and threw it.

 

 

She had the headset back on by the time Peter checked in again.

"Third floor," he said, and from his tone of voice, she could tell something had changed.

"Is Broyles listening?" Peter asked. Broyles pressed his earpiece needlessly against his temple.

"Broyles," he said. "What do you need?"

"I need you to get Nina on a line. I need to ask her something."

Nina was on in seconds.

"Nina," she said. "Peter?"

"This might be a personal question," Peter said, and paused. Broyles glanced around the circle of agents, and the headsets peeled off in unison. Olivia watched the building, but listened like an owl for the faint scratch of voices from the earpieces. Peter asked his question, but his voice was too low and she couldn't catch it over the gunshot sounds of popping brick. She only barely caught Nina's response: _excruciating_.

Astrid gave Broyles the signal when Nina's line dropped, and the headsets went back on.

"Peter," Olivia said. "What was that about?"

"You know that thing I said about book clubs and shopping not making you happy?" he said. "I'm reconsidering."

She looked around helplessly. "What can I do?"

"Shouldn't be long, now," he said. The headset clicked; Astrid leaned out of the van and called that she'd lost him; the only things Olivia could do were step back and stare up and wait.

 

 

Peter came out alone.

An agent who'd gone to find three shock blankets edged back toward the ambulances when she saw him, taking the blankets out of Peter's sight, like she were somehow ashamed on Peter's behalf, like she might lessen the blow of Peter's failure by hiding the preparations for his success. But Olivia could tell by the slow drag of Peter's body as he walked toward her that there had been no failure. There had never been the possibility of three people coming down in the first place.

Broyles wanted a statement, like always, except that it wasn't okay with Olivia that he wanted it _at that moment_ , because Peter's face was tired in the blue and red lights and at some point, he'd started shivering. Olivia wondered if the agent who'd procured the blankets was watching from a backseat somewhere, wondering if it would be better or worse to appear with one, now.

"We can do this later," she said, decisively. Broyles listened, nodded, let her take Peter by the arm and lead him away.

 

 

They were driven home.

The backseat of a car was an unfamiliar place to both of them.

Somewhere on the interstate, Olivia felt an irregular vibration through her seat. It took her a minute to realize it was Peter, looking out the window, gripping the door, shivering again. Maybe he hadn't ever stopped. She didn't think about putting her hand out to him; she just did.

 

 

By the time the car pulled up at the house, Peter's shakes had turned violent. Olivia shepherded him into the house, sat him down at the kitchen table.

"I'm fine," he muttered, flashing something that maybe he meant to look like a smile, though his teeth were chattering. "I'll be fine. It's just chemical; happens every time I go McClane. It'll wear off." He tested a deep breath. Olivia took a moment to decide between actions, then went for one of Walter's warmer overcoats.

"Get up," she said, heaping the coat into his arms. "We're going for a walk."

He looked up at her. At the moment, he wasn't sure he could stand, let alone walk.

"C'mon," she said, waiting. She waited a long time, but then Peter hauled himself up.

"You might have to help me with this," he said, slightly wry, pushing the jacket across the table with hands that fluttered like butterflies.

 

 

She chose their course; Peter just followed. They walked like this for miles, and when Peter found himself at their front door again, he couldn't say where they'd been. He felt better. Emptied.

He followed her a little longer, up the stairs.

 

 

Olivia didn't usually dream about cases. It was useless to live that way, with the work she did. To not let go easily and immediately was to throw energy away on nothing. But she couldn't help it, this time. 

Preempting Peter's statement to Broyles had left her with an unsolved case, a string of possibilities, and maybe because it was Peter, she couldn't let it go. So her brain took Peter's casualties and killed them every way it knew how: dropped them through a floor, walked them through a hole, lost them under a wall, pushed them, let them jump, _made_ them jump, shot them in the back, shot them to their faces. When she woke the fifth time, she decided not to sleep anymore. 

"Peter," she whispered.

Peter hummed, barely awake. It was still dark.

"Tell me how it happened."

He rolled over; was going to say _what?_ but didn't.

"I just," she shrugged the shoulder of the arm that was propping her up in bed, "need to know."

"Okay," he said. "Let me- let me be right back."

She waited while he shuffled to the bathroom, shuffled back, and sat on the edge of the bed. He thought about it for a long time.

"We weren't going to get past the third floor," he said, finally. "By the time we got down that far...it just wasn't possible. The holes were-" he let his hands spread in front of him, instead of finishing.

"You called Nina," she prompted, and he glanced up, surprised she hadn't kept her set on to hear it.

"She's the only one who - who'd had the experience. I wanted to know how bad it was, for her." His hand lifted briefly from his knee. "If I should consider...other means, for them."

Olivia'd been doing well maintaining eye contact until then, but her eyes went straight to the floor, to the rug, to Peter's foot.

"And, I mean..." He sighed, crushingly. "Look. I did what I thought was the right thing."

Her silence pressed him on.

"I just started thinking of Reiden Lake, and Walter, and all the things that could have been done better -- no, all the things that I _imagined_ could have been done better about the way I was taken -- and I didn't think about it the way I should have.

"I had this idea, I think, up until veryrecently, that I could've-" He looked at her, and she felt obliged to look back up at him. "I thought I could have made the choice. I thought I would have _wanted_ to make the choice: what universe was home. Where I would live. _Whether_ I would live. But there was no way. No fucking way I could have chosen. I get that, now." He sounded like he was smiling. Olivia knew he couldn't be -- she was looking at him, and he wasn't -- but it was in his voice, something tight in his jaw.

"I gave them the choice," he said. "because I thought they'd want it. Can you believe that? I looked them in the eye and expected them to _choose_."

 


	41. January: The Inductive Experiment

### The Inductive Experiment

At two in the morning, Olivia woke like clockwork. It was Walter dropping the toilet seat like a cannonball that woke her, followed by his Niagara-sounding flush in the wet wall. Ordinarily, she would have turned over and gone back to sleep, but since the fringe events had gotten bad, Walter's bathroom runs had hauled her out of nightmares, each worse than the last, and she found it a relief to be awake.

It'd taken her a few days to realize the nightmares weren't really about what they were about.

The way she felt wasn't about Peter in the office building, nor was it about any of the other events that had cropped up of late. It was more than that: it was the same feeling she'd had years ago, when John Scott was turning see-through and she'd gone across the world to find someone who could save him and it had all come too late.

For months after John's death, she'd dreamed of being five hours faster: faster to get Peter Bishop on a plane to the States, faster to get Walter Bishop out of St. Clair's, fast enough to keep John's lungs from turning to gravy. But that panic over John Scott had never really been about John Scott, just as, now, Olivia knew her dread wasn't really about Peter, nor the people who'd died, nor the holes in the world. It was that she was supposed to have been able to stop it.

Everything about her life had been meant to lead her toward being able save those people, to save Peter from havingto save those people. The Cortexiphan, the light box, the tests, the multiple interventions by mad geniuses -- and still, she hadn't been ready. She hadn't been able to do what was needed. And _would_ she be able to, in the future? Given the sudden uptick in fringe events, a critical turning point could be only a day ahead of her. Walter's prophetic images had shown her a version of herself that could intervene in the fate of the world, but what was she prepared to do, really? She felt far removed from the person in the picture.

Moving into the Bishops' home initially had been a matter of duty, a functional step. Her mission had been to save people, to fix things, to do whatever it would take to reach her potential. She hadn't (at least, she'd thought she hadn't) let comfort and familiarity become a distraction. Yet, here she was, even after the horrors of the past week, at home in bed, trying to sleep.

Olivia looked to Peter, asleep beside her, his face a foot from hers, and the thought crossed her mind that she could wake him up and expect him to offer some comfort (because, ordinarily, that's what sharing a bed with someone would allow) but wouldn't that be just another amelioration, another sleeping pill, when she should be wide awake and working?

She got up.

In the kitchen, she made toast and burned it, just to have something to chew while she walked in circles.

After a few laps of the living room, she stopped. Her eyes settled on the television. It occurred to her that a television was not unlike a box of lights, and that, if she wanted to work _as hard as she could_ , there were types of work she could be pursuing harder than she was.

 

 

Peter didn't mean to creep up on her. Soft feet, he supposed, and the fact that Olivia was staring holes through the television (never mind that there was nothing on but static) got him down the stairs and to the back of the couch without drawing her attention.

"S _omnus non est defesso._ "

" _Peter_ ," Olivia said, jumping at the sound of his voice. "You scared the hell out of me."

"If only it had always been so easy to get you to admit that."

"Peter," she sighed, refusing to lift her eyes from the television as she felt his hands compress the couch behind her shoulders. He leaned over her, waiting.

"I missed my 4:30 wakeup kick," he said.

"I don't do that."

"Yeah, you do."

She blinked. "Is it 4:30 already?"

"Sure is." He glanced at the television, still playing nothing but static. "TV's on," he noted.

"I'm aware."

"For any reason in particular?"

"Yes," she said, as if that would explain anything. She twisted back to look up at him. "Peter, I want to go to the lab."

"Now? Why, what happened? Something wrong?"

"Kind of."

"You're staring at a blank television at five in the morning, and now you want to go to the lab; I'm guessing 'kind of' might not cover it." He ambled around the couch and took up a seat. "What's going on?"

"I made a mistake, living here," she said. She caught the sting in Peter's face, but also the steadying of his expression as he waited for clarification. "What I mean is that I came here to do something and I haven't done it. And now bad things are happening and I don't have the answers I was supposed to find. I was supposed to prevent these things. I should've been able to stop them."

"Olivia-"

"I told myself I was doing everything I could, but I wasn't," she said. "So. That thing you asked me to keep in the back of my mind. That thing I said I'd try." She paused. "I'm ready now."

Peter didn't say anything for a minute. He looked between her and the television, and then he understood. "Yeah?"

"I want to go to the lab."

 

 

At 5:46am, Peter set two gas station coffees down next to Walter's rotary evaporator and pulled two chairs together in a corner of the lab.

"Okay," he said, taking the chair that Olivia didn't and scuffing it close, "despite anything I may have said before in the interests of making you receptive to this idea...keep your expectations comfortably low."

"Cold feet?" she smirked.

"Definitely not," he said, edging forward, his knees almost grazing hers. "I'm just saying, I haven't exactly had the chance to practice." Olivia sat perfectly still and ramrod straight.

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing at all."

She shut her eyes and waited.

If she'd expected Peter's presence to be efficient or in any way precise, she'd overestimated his capabilities. Where his mind made contact with hers, he was a blunt instrument, pushing and tugging like Mike Mulligan and his damned steam shovel. There was no good descriptor for the loss of balance, but the physical jolt was like hitting her funny bone with a screwdriver. The sensation of nakedness went far enough under her skin that it made her crawl up onto the chair to get away.

Peter opened his eyes to see her half-kneeling on the seat. "You okay?" he asked, waiting for her to tell him he wasn't getting a second chance, that she'd tried it and once was enough, thanks.

"You'd better have a damn steep learning curve," she said, instead.

"It's just me and vos Savant in the MENSA fight club."

Olivia smiled, just a little. "Again," she ordered, as her fingers went white around the wooden arms.

 

 

Subsequent attempts worked as well as the first. Olivia's hands kept flying up to defend herself, her eyes taking on a sort of rosy sadness, and Peter was rapidly losing his will to make himself try again, despite Olivia's insistence. On the tenth try - maybe the eleventh - he looked into her face and wished the process didn't feel so much like he were hurting her somehow, maybe even more than the drugs and shocks.

"That's it for me," he said, finally, "let's leave it for today." Pushing back from their failing telepathic enterprise gave him room to stretch his legs and observe Olivia's posture, which let him know two things pretty clearly: one, that she wasn't ready to quit. Two, that she wasn't quite okay, either. He moved back toward her, catching the leg of his chair with his ankle and pulling it with him so he could sit and reach for her hand and hold it. "Hey."

She blinked up at him.

"We'll get this," he said. "I mean, we've already done it, once." Which they had, in a field, by accident, so how hard could it be? "Look," he said, and he almost added, ' _it's not the end of the world_ ,' before he caught himself. "It's invasive and weird; I get that. But it will get easier. Think of it as one more crazy thing in the crazy thing buffet. And it's not like we don't have other options. We're still working. And, I mean, as soon as that New Room is done, you can go in there and crank the Walternator up to eleven."

Olivia sighed. One of Walter's overnight experiments gurgled from across the lab, and she turned to look. "Tomorrow," she said. "Let's do this again tomorrow. Bring snacks."

 


	42. January: Peter's OD, or, I Love You

### Peter's OD, or, I Love You

Peter got strapped into the chair while Olivia sucked Sprite through a straw and gloated that it wasn't her turn. Walter had been in good spirits all day, ever since he'd discovered that the vending machine had been filled with a row of Razzles. He finished the IVs and Astrid double-checked them.

The monitors were already on. The defibrillator was standing innocuously on a cart in the corner of the room, as it had been for months, and none of them even gave it a thought; Peter's dosage hike was not nearly enough to make them think about defibrillators, stopped hearts or syringes of adrenaline. And that was fair enough. But they had all gotten so used to the procedure that none of them noticed that Peter's vial of Cortexiphan was a slightly different color than it should've been, because it wasn't holding Peter's intended dosage; it was holding Olivia's. She easily took twice what Peter could, and it had taken her months to work up to it. 

Peter went into cardiac arrest a minute after Walter opened the IV switch, and for the next two minutes and forty-five seconds the defibrillator was the most thought-of piece of equipment in the lab.

 

 

Peter blinked. He felt indiscriminately shitty. He always expected some novel aches and pains when they upped his dose, but this was wicked.

"Bad trip," he said gruffly. His eyes started to focus again, and the thought crossed his mind that he wasn't in the chair. No, he was definitely _not_ in the chair. He was on a gurney. He was...shirtless? And everyone was huddled over him. The look on Olivia's face was all wrong, and the look on _Walter's_...

He tried to sit up, but Astrid, at his shoulder, held him down with a palm that felt like the business end of a branding iron. "Stay," she said. Walter was making little gasping noises. "Walter," she said, turning to him and keeping her voice soft, "sit down." But Walter didn't: he stood up from his crouch and made a beeline to the rear office. Peter looked to Olivia.

" _Really_ bad trip?" he asked.

"You've been out for nine hours," Astrid said. "You have no idea."

 

 

As Peter eased himself off the gurney, he thought it would have been nice if they'd kept him out for another nine hours. His chest ached and his joints were on fire,though that didn't concern him as much the fact that apparently his heart had stopped and he didn't remember any of it. That was just unnerving. It didn't seem real. Maybe it would sink in later, but all he had at the moment was the strange sense of having missed something. 

A stretch of time passed as he sat gingerly in an office chair and sipped Gatorade. Besides the aches, he felt all right. He wondered if he was supposed to.

Walter didn't come out of the office. Peter could see his shadow on the drawn blinds, pacing. Olivia, exhausted, continued to sit at a desk and look anywhere but at him. She hadn't been crying. 

_If I were some other guy who just almost died, I might be offended by that,_ Peter thought, and then he felt bad for making a joke of it, even one that nobody could hear.

 

 

When Peter opened the back office door, Walter stopped pacing. He stood there helplessly, arms at his sides, while Peter moved toward him. His eyes focused on Peter's chest where the defibrillator pads had left faint red footprints.

"It's going to be fine," Peter said. Walter was unconvinced. He couldn't meet Peter's gaze but he couldn't stop looking at the rest of him. "It was an accident," Peter said."I'll take some time off, and then-"

"Son," Walter said sharply, and stopped. He wavered, waiting for something to interrupt, but Peter left off with the platitudes. He put his hand on Walter's shoulder, bending toward him, and Walter completed the arc, reaching for Peter's face, his neck, knitting Peter completely into his arms. 

The resilience of his son's body reassured him, yet Walter couldn't overcome the feeling that haunted him, of the frail seven-year-old struggling to stay alive in his arms. Nothing about the grown man under his hands could cancel out the phantom press of the tiny nose and cheeks over his heart. That last exhale, smothered against his chest, penetrating his vest and shirt, the wet, feverish heat clinging finally to his skin.

"Son," Walter said again, but this time his voice broke and he pressed his face against his son's neck, trying to pick up Peter's anciently familiar scent with rough, clumsy breaths and taking comfort from the half-beard that prickled at his skin. Peter was shocked into stillness. He was a guest at the cathedral of paternal love and maybe he would be forever, staring blindly at the altar, only imagining he could understand how deeply he pulled at Walter's blood.

"It's okay," Peter said. He tightened his hold, planting his hands firmly across Walter's back to cover as much area as possible. 

"I can't," Walter murmured. Like he was dreaming. "I can't." Peter shushed Walter quietly and felt his father's eyelashes graze like buttercup petals against his skin.

"It's okay," Peter said again. 

"Peter," Walter whispered. "I loved you." The past tense didn't bother Peter nearly as much as it could have, but it was sad and terrible and it made Peter ache where Walter had for decades. For whatever reason, he said _I knew_ instead of _I know_ and it made his father cry.

 

 

Peter left the office overflowing with love.

He went home overflowing with love.

He waited until Walter was in the kitchen and he and Olivia were alone in the sanctity of the living room before saying her name in a way that held her in place. He went directly to her, took her face in his hands, looked down at her evenly with a smile that may not have been there at all. She looked back. She hadn't turned on the lights, the dawn sun having just become enough. The cool, clean light detailed them both. 

Peter kissed her certainly, surely. She barely had time to put her hands up to his face before he lifted his head away and gathered her into a steadfast bear hug. He held her for a long time, to the point where she became self-conscious and then past that until she became comfortable again. He took his time: intent, peaceful.

"I love you," he said. His head rested against hers; he spoke into the space above her shoulder. It was the first time he'd told her. He pressed his lips to her neck for a moment, swaying gently with her, and then Walter dropped a pot in the kitchen. The noise made Olivia jump. Peter released her but she didn't move.

Walter appeared, finally, in the open wall. He watched them stand together and hope overtook the worry on his face, which set Olivia in motion toward the kitchen muttering _I'm starving._

And that was that.


	43. January: Poker Night

### Poker Night

Walter tugs at the elbow creases of his red and white pinstripe shirt. He cannot make the creases straight. All he wants is to align the pinstripes over the peaks and valleys, but the fabric is ironed, not starched, and it falls back into casual disarray.

"Hit me," Ruthie says smugly. Her hand is good, or terrible, but Ruthie is a poor bluffer.

Walter places a card face-up in front of her, but not the card he expects to see. This does not escape Astrid; in all the games she's played with Walter, he's never failed to count cards meticulously.

Ruthie peels the corners of her cards from the table to peek at them again, although she knows what they are. She hisses her fake disappointment but it's clearly a lie: she's grinning. From across the table, there are calls of good-natured disparagement. Walter looks back down at his shirt, his face eclipsed by the transparent green visor that usually makes him sit up straighter and use idioms of the old West. He's lost and wandering, hiking over the frustrating topography of his sleeve.

The blackjack interlude in the otherwise poker-y night has been constructed with Walter in mind, because usually it pleases him to see chaos at work: the women playing choose-your-own-adventure while he knew every possible ending. But Astrid sees that it isn't working. The other girls have noticed as well, and have been trying to rally his spirit. They've laughed a little harder and trash-talked a little louder and Jane even requested Walter tell The Joke, the _especially_ filthy one, the one that took three minutes. But his attempt was joyless and he forgot a few lines and didn't realize.

Astrid feels a stroke of the saddest sympathy she knows. It's been almost a week since Peter's overdose. She'd thought a good poker night might bring Walter back from his fearful loneliness, hoped he'd remember that life goes on, that poker nights keep coming around, that there are snacks to buy and bets to place. And that Peter is alive, waiting, still trusting and that is a _good_ thing, not shameful.

Though she is loathe to leave a pile of chips higher than her soda can, Astrid pushes back from the table. She cranes her neck to get a look at Walter's face, parallel with the table.

"Walter," she asks, and he looks sidelong to her. "Want to come with me?"

"Where will we go?" he asks, and he seems so despondent, as if hoping her answer could be somewhere beyond the sphere of the earth, beyond the torment of his failures. Knowing she'll only disappoint him with something mundane.

"Away," she says. Walter turns his head. _Away_ has meant so many things. _Away_ has been _locked away_ , in a place like St. Claire's, where they assumed he belonged and they made him believe it. _Away_ has been _went away:_ Peter disappearing instead of coming to his rescue because he didn't know what to believe about his father. And _away_ is where Peter is going to go again, after what's happened, after what Walter's done. And if not because of _this_ mistake, then because of the next one. Only a matter of time.

Walter feels Astrid's light hand on his arm, and the way she places her fingers makes the creases straight for a moment. He lets her instruct him to stand.

"Divide my chips," Astrid tells the table, and there is a small round of ' _awws'_ and one ' _gimme those chips'_ but only to let her know she'll be missed.

"See you next week," Jane says to Walter, and there is no question there. She picks something up from the table and reaches to tuck it into Walter's breast pocket. A fruit roll-up. He covers the pocket tenderly with his hand and it looks like he's ready to say the Pledge of Allegiance.

"Thank you," he says solemnly. He feels his heavy jacket being placed over his shoulders and then Astrid is walking him to the door.

 

 

He is used to Astrid's car. It smells like Astrid's car always smells. He adjusts the front seat the way he usually has to, pushing it back so his knees won't be crowded. He pulls the seatbelt on and then sits there, waiting.

"You want to pick the music?" she asks him as she starts the car. He shakes his head.

 

 

Food is the easy way to please him, but she doesn't go there. He doesn't need placation. So they end up instead where she aims them in good faith: on a bench at the seaport. It's dark and there aren't many other people, but she has a keychain mace in her pocket and they're going to be fine.

She watches the buildings, the lights and windows. There are people moving in their offices, working late in an atmosphere so foreign to her that Astrid says a prayer of thanks: the idea of smelling like toner and dry-erase markers instead of cow manure and chemical smoke gives her the shivers. Walter is watching the water, where the reflection of those offices is broken into a million pieces and scattered. The bay is dark and deep, shipping channels carved like trenches under the surface. He's wondering how deep it goes and how many bodies lie at the bottom.

A long period of time goes by, several degrees of the moon. It's cold. Astrid wants to check him to see if his coat is buttoned up all the way, but that's not her job and she has to remind herself of that. He's a grown man and too often their little family hasn't given him that. He's overcome much of his learned helplessness and part of that is going to be making mistakes. She wishes he hadn't made that one mistake with Peter's drugs, though: not because the damage is irreparable (it's not) but because it's made Walter too afraid to keep going. He needs to keep going.

"Walter? You want to talk about anything?" she offers. It's less than buttoning up his coat, but it's something.

"No, thank you," he says in return. Politeness is something he's relearned, and she wishes she could bypass it now.

"I want to talk," she says. "About Peter."

"No," he mutters, his face setting and his hands tightening into fists. "No."

"Walter, you have to have faith," she says. She turns sideways on the bench, folding her legs up under her. "He trusts you."

"I might have killed him."

"Yes, you might have. But you didn't. And we can be more careful. I can help you," she says. He looks up. "We can keep him safe."

Walter brought a curled hand up to his lips, hiding his drawn expression. "It won't be enough," he cried. "How many times must he _nearly_ die?" Astrid sits quietly watching him. He is not afraid to look at her, despite the emotional transparency of his face. The opposite of poker. "I have to be good for him," he grinds out. "Or else I've kept him against his best interests."

"You _are_ good for him," she says, and she knows he's going to parry with his past absence, his emotional distance, his involvement with his work, and she has to stop that before it starts because he can get lost in those reasons so easily. "You found a way through timespace to save his life. You would do anything for him. _Anything_ , Walter, and he knows it." Walter's face bends. His hope is tiny, dancing on the head of a pin. She thinks hard about whether to ask the question she wants him to answer. She doesn't know if he'll answer, doesn't know if he'll even let himself hear the words.

"Walter..." she starts. His wide eyes are trained upon her, begging for another affirmation. "Why did you keep him? Why didn't you take him back?" Walter's eyes narrow, shielding his mind. He recoils a few inches. He doesn't answer, and she doesn't speak. She won't apologize for the question, but doesn't have the heart to press him for the answer. She already knows, anyhow; she just wants him to hear it come out of his own mouth and she wants him to hear somebody validate it.

The corners of his mouth turn down. "I'm tired, Astral," he says.

"I know," she tells him.

"Can we go home now? I want to see him," he says, gathering his jacket around himself. She nods.

They stand and walk to the car in the quiet of winter. The night hasn't been what she wanted it to be. She feels impotent, grasping at straws and, for all her knowledge of him, unable to find the solution to this equation. Halfway, Walter sees something on the ground and stops. He stoops and picks it up. His hands clench around it, then release to study it in his fingers. It's a coin. Just a quarter, but in the dark it may have seemed larger.

"I watched him die," Walter whispers. She is watching him study the coin when he looks directly up into her eyes. "He died," he says, putting his elbows out to the side as if carrying something, "in my arms. If he hadn't, I don't think I would have believed that he could _._ I was so certain I would prevail."

Astrid stays exactly where she is. She doesn't move, doesn't breathe.

"The other me never had to see," Walter continues, "his own insignificance. His powerlessness!" Walter stares back at the coin, hidden in his white-knuckled fist. "He still believed he could put it off forever. Peter's...death." He takes in a heavy breath. "You can't possibly believe it until it happens. You can't possibly."

Astrid sees his pant legs begin to tremble. She steps toward him.

"Since that day I have never taken even a _moment_ of his life for granted," he says. His conviction heats him, reddening his cheeks. "Even in that place." Astrid nods. He moves toward her. She puts her arms out and he staggers into them, folding around her and over her and she finds herself bearing a significant part of his weight. He's shaking. "I _never_ have," he says into her coat. "and I never will."

"I believe you," she says.

"I knew that was not true of _Him_ ," Walter says. Astrid thinks that if anyone could know the other Walter, it'd be this one. They stand together for longer than they had been sitting on the bench. A few more degrees of the moon. She relaxes into him and he into her. Her arms are under his coat and against his warm back. She is strong and so is he, but both in different ways. The sounds of his breathing are so familiar, sounds she's heard over her shoulder for years now. Finally he stands up straight, or as straight as he usually stands. She slips her hands from under his coat and he smooths its lapels.

"Astrid," Walter says. His hands fumble beneath the overcoat. "I want you to have this." It's a fruit roll-up. Strawberry; his favorite flavor. In real-people land a fruit roll-up is not considered any kind of gift. But this is not real-people land. This is just the two of them, and he's holding the little package out to her and wiping his eyes with his other hand.

She loves him so deeply at this moment. She loves him because she understands him, because he accepts and believes that she understands him, and because through him she understands a little bit of herself.

"Thanks, Walter." Astrid gets up on her toes and puts her hands on his face. She pulls him down just far enough to press her cheek against the softness of his, holding there for a minute, her eyes closed. His eyes are open, almost bewildered, thoroughly touched. As she pulls away she presses a kiss to his cheek where it's warm from her face. She lands back on her heels and looks up at him.

Walter is no Jane; Astrid knows this. They are very different from each other. They provide differently for her and she provides differently for them, but in this way they are the same: she loves them. And though even this love is manifest differently toward each of them, it is thorough and moving and real. She is _positive_ Walter can understand this.

"I'll take you home," she says. 


	44. January: Psychoneuroimmunology

### Psychoneuroimmunology

Nobody could get Walter to go back to the experiments. The chair was collecting dust. And maybe it was a good thing, because after the drugs stopped flowing, Peter and Olivia's overtaxed immune systems collapsed. Either they were addicts or they were overworked, and they both agreed to believe that they just _really_ needed the rest.

 

 

Olivia occupied the dark living room, a large kitchen bowl on her lap. She didn't look at Peter when he came back from the store, not even to make a sick face or ask for the ginger tea she'd had him go out and get.

Peter left the paper bag by the door, going to check on her, but as he headed for the couch she whispered, "don't touch me," and he held his step. She amended herself with a dry and quiet "sorry," but he knew she hadn't meant it like that. He put his hands up and approached anyway, the promise unspoken that he would leave her undisturbed. Off her miserable, pleading glance he decided not to sit next to her; he had gotten friendly with nausea since the beginning of their run in the lab and he knew how loose those couch springs were, how it felt like riding a ship through a storm when either of them sat down. It probably wasn't anything she wanted to experience at the moment.

Instead, he folded himself down onto the floor, his back shored up by the edges of cushions and the generously-upholstered wood frame. He faced obediently forward, looking at the dark television. It was off, and he didn't offer to change that. It would only be a question she'd have to answer, a word she'd have to form and speak, and she seemed to be concentrating pretty intently on other, more important things. Like equilibrium.

He listened for any thoughts she projected. He didn't get _Peter, please stay,_ but he didn't get _Peter, get the hell away from me,_ either. Comfortable enough, he decided it would be better to stay in case she wanted him to, than leave her in case she didn't. He brought a hand up to touch her knee reassuringly, catching himself at the last minute and miming the gesture instead. She tried to be grateful without moving or speaking, which wouldn't have worked nearly as well had Peter not been able to read her mind. As things stood, she was lucky. He smiled, nodded smartly, and clasped his hands between his thighs. Maybe in a minute he would go make that tea.

But then the radiators came on, bringing the mesmerizing cavalry of water hammers, and Peter lost his sense of time. Imagining shapes on the dormant TV, his mind relaxed and blurred and he became gradually aware of things as if they were floating by him in a river, catching in his eddy: an ache in his knees, a rising headache, nausea sparking.

 _Wonderful_ , he thought ruefully.He wondered if he shouldn't have sat down, if maybe he were to get up again, maybe he could stave off his turn at being sick for just a few more hours, long enough to get Olivia upstairs so they could both collapse in a place with pillows and the possibility of sleeping late. She was still clutching the same cold aluminum bowl that she'd had when he'd left the house, and it wouldn't help to have them _both_ incapacitated on the sofa. Especially with only one bowl.

He supposed, though, that it might be unavoidable. He eyed the bowl strategically before letting his head fall back to rest on the cushions behind him. The ceiling made a good place to rest his eyes while he took deep breaths, mustering focus to sweep the unpleasantness clean. He'd gotten good at meditation over the years; there was always plenty of time to practice transcendencein a holding cell overnight. It was a useful trick for a man who'd been arrested seven times to have _._ And also, it turned out, a useful trick for a man who typically got electrocuted several times every other day.

It took Peter a while, but he had nothing but time. Slowly, all things ebbed into the meditative haze: the pain, and with it the rest of his waking energy.

 

 

Peter started awake from half-asleep, his head resting against Olivia's thigh. He mumbled _sorry_ and dizzily pulled himself away. The pain had, for the most part, abated. In its place was a penetrating exhaustion, like he'd never actually awakened and was instead slogging forward through a dream. He raked his hair in the hope of lifting the weight from his skull in some symbolic way, ans sought Olivia's face in the shadows. She was heavy-eyed, close to sleep, or maybe, like him, newly awake. But she looked better than she had been. Much better. The bowl had been cast off sideways to an otherwise empty cushion, and she was almost smiling down at him, underwater in the blue-and-orange dark.

"Neat trick," she said, and even her voice was dim. Peter was too tired to figure out what she meant, but she kept staring at him like he should know.

"What?" he asked finally. She angled her head, confused. "What trick," he said again. She waited, then looked over at the empty bowl and touched its rim thoughtfully. 

"You didn't...?" she said. She fell quiet, and he didn't have the energy to go looking around in her head for more than that. He stretched his arms over his head and let the rest of his body follow: tense and release.

"Let's go," he grumbled, stumbling up off the rug and turning back to rouse her. "Come on. Up."

They tottered up the stairs like half-crushed bugs. Olivia felt well enough to brush her teeth but she skipped everything else. Peter didn't even get to the bathroom. She found him sprawled out in bed, a bleary starfish, moaning exhaustedly about how good it felt to be under the blankets. Olivia turned out the lights and pushed in beside him, tugging over her share of the quilts. She shivered. She was cold again in the oh-so-special way that meant the fever was regaining its ground, crawling out from her spine, but the temporary reprieve had been a godsend.

 _Thanks for that, Peter,_ she thought to him.Somewhere in his periphery, she hoped he might pick it up. 

"Make hay while the sun shines," he whispered, almost incoherent, and she realized he had no idea what he'd done.If she hadn't felt so shitty she would have shaken her head. In any event, it was a _very_ neat trick. 

 

 

"No I didn't," he said, throwing his half of the covers off.

"Yes, you did," she said, tossing them back when they landed on her, albeit more gently because she was still slightly achy. Peter sat up, blinking into the sunlight, and made himself get out of bed. He shuffled over to the chair where he draped his towel when he was too lazy to hang it right. “You can't really think it’s a _coincidence_ that this happens after what we've been practicing?”

"Practicing and failing," Peter reminded her.

"Let's see what Walter thinks," Olivia offered threateningly. Peter turned around, towel over his arm like a half-dressed fine-dining waiter.

"Go ahead," he said, "I can tell you right now what he's going to say. 'Diseases involve complex processes interacting in a delicate imbalance within the body and cannot simply be cured in a moment's time.'" He said it in a reasonable approximation of Walter's voice and Olivia wanted to smile but this was an argument, dammit, and she didn't smile during arguments. 

"You can't be serious," she said, following him down the hall in her bare feet and t-shirt (one of his; they covered more. He'd never seemed to mind, but then again she'd never asked his permission). "Are we both talking about the man who believed in sentient viruses?"

"Believe _s_ ," Peter said. "Believ _es_ in sentient viruses. And maybe the tooth fairy." He was in the bathroom now, hanging his towel on the wall hook. She hovered outside the door. He lowered his head and raised his eyebrows. "You gonna follow me in here?" Olivia didn't even have to try to look irritated. She put her hand on the door defiantly.

"I don't care what you think you didn't do," she shot at him, "but I was sick, and now I'm not, and it was _you._ "

 

 

"Diseases are complex processes interacting in a delicate imbalance within the body," Walter said, and Peter looked so fucking triumphant that if she hadn't been driving she would have punched his arm. "But that which Olivia is suggesting is not beyond the realm of possibility."

"Walter, _come on,_ " Peter complained. "This is overwork and rest, simple as that." He turned around in the passenger's seat to look Walter in the back. "I mean, really, mind-control healing?" He didn't ask, _how would that even work?_ because he could actually think of a few ways. It wasn't even that outlandish an idea; it was just ridiculous that she thought _he_ could do it, and that made him want to ignore the whole thing.

"This reminds me of an experiment," Walter said, "performed during the time that I was working in the lab with William Bell. I remember that it was of great interest to us. We believed that this experiment -- specifically, its failure -- would advance our own research into the drug we were developing."

"The drug you were developing." Peter said. "Dare I ask?"

"Cortexiphan, of course," Walter said.

"Right," Peter sighed. 

"Rats," Walter started again, "were given sweetened water containing an emetic. Once the rats had come to associate the sweet water with nausea, the drug was removed and the water continued to be given in order to find a point at which the association between nausea and the water would be broken."

"Does this story have a relevant, applicable or otherwise pertinent end?" Peter asked. Walter's eyes were getting wide, his hand motions more exuberant.

"However," he said emphatically, "after a month, the rats began to fall ill and die. The experimenters were baffled. The documentation was checked and rechecked, until someone realized that the emetic was _also_ an immuno-suppressant." 

"Conclusion, please?" Olivia called from the driver's seat.

"It couldn't be clearer," Walter mumbled, but Peter spoke over him.

"The rats died because their immune systems were shot, even though they weren't getting the drug."

"So what does that mean?" Olivia asked. Peter was almost slouching in his seat beside her.

"It doesn't mean anything," he said. "It was one experiment, and while I'm sure Walter's just dying to tell us about a million others-"

"It _suggested_ ," Walter interrupted forcefully, "that the rat's brains had _instructed_ their immune systems to shut down. The true discovery of this failed psychological experiment was that mind _can_ prevail over matter."

"Which means if Peter could get in my head, he could tell my immune system to go the other way, to work harder than usual," Olivia said.

"In theory," Walter said. "Though the field of psychoneuroimmunology is still relatively new. Peter, do you think we could stop for some string cheese?"

"Maybe later," Peter said. He was on his smartphone, looking things up, tapping _psychoneuroimmunology_ into Google. 

 


	45. December: Rachmaninoff

### Rachmaninoff

The dry spell couldn't have lasted forever, but Peter could have done with a few more days off before getting back in the saddle. He rubbed his wrists as Astrid removed the straps, then pulled himself out of the Chair. After hobbling around for a few minutes, stopping to stretch his back and roll his ankles, he helped Walter and Astrid roll up the tubing and repack the electrodes. Walter was clearly still fighting back worries from the overdose, but he'd kept calm enough.

Peter picked his possessions off the desk: wallet first and keys last, holding the Vista Cruiser ignition between two fingers as if he were already in the car. 

"Come on," he said to Olivia. "I have an appointment."

He drove them down roads that Olivia only vaguely knew and ended up in a driveway next to a brick building with old paint advertisements fading on its side. Picture windows in front were covered by drawn shades and metal grates.

"Here we are," Peter said, by way of explanation. He parked the car in the almost-empty lot and killed the ignition.

"What kind of appointment is this?" she asked.

"Come see," he said. 

 

 

The building's rear entrance had the kind of door Olivia had seen as a girl in banks and doctors' offices: heavy, with a little window and something stenciled on the glass. The light coming through that window was the only light on the block, save for the streetlights and the 24-hour diner. Up close, the stencil read: _M. Werner Tisch, by appointment_. 

Peter knocked just beneath the lettering while Olivia scuffed her foot on the sealed asphalt, little stones making an impatient sound under her shoe. Then there was the turn of a key in the lock and a man pulled the door open; a little bell that jingled as they stepped in. Something smelled new, but it wasn't anything she could see.

"Welcome, welcome," the man said. He waved his hand toward the end of the hallway they'd entered. On the walls there were photographs of people Olivia didn't recognize, labeled with names she didn't know. _Arrau. Ashkenazy. Pollini._ The one labeled _Horowitz_ was inscribed, in Russian. The man laid a hand on her arm; it was a wide hand, but feather-light. "You look around," he said. "Ask questions." She gave him a short smile. Peter put his hand on her shoulder reassuringly, with that same light touch.

"C'mon," he said. "Let's go look." He passed her in the narrow hall, letting his hand fall as he went. M. Werner Tisch, Olivia presumed, opened a door in the wall and burrowed into a tiny office, the door of which was stenciled the same as the other, with the addition: _proprietor and sales_. He sat at a desk, writing in a ledger, surrounded by shelves upon shelves jammed with thousands of thin sheafs of paper. Olivia gave him a surreptitious glance as she went after Peter. 

"Peter," she whispered, "what are we doing here?" He turned back to her with a bitten-lip smile, almost nervous.

"Olivia Dunham, I'm not sure if you understand what a momentous occasion this is," he said. "I'm about to buysomething very big and very heavy, which I will then _own_. Meaning that, after tonight, I will have a valuable possession that I can't easily move." She looked at him blankly. "And I'll let you figure out why that's a big thing for me," he finished. Together, they reached the accordion door at the end of the hall. Peter pushed it aside and they stepped through into a bright, warm room with a rippled ceiling, filled with pianos.

"Oh," Olivia said.

Peter sighed happily. "Oh, _yes_ ," he muttered. 

He went for a concert grand first, an intimidatingly lacquered Baldwin with such an unmarred shine that it distracted him from the keys. Stretching his hands, he sat down at the bench and tested the weight of each pedal with his foot. It had been a while.

The room was so perfectly soundless that it was hard to play the first note, but Peter managed. Slowly at first, notes dropped, buttery and liquid like musical heavy cream, and formed something precise and geometric. By comparison, the church-basement relic at the lab sounded more like a busted cardboard-box guitar, or hitting angry bees one at a time with a hammer. Olivia wandered off to look around but came back to watch Peter play.

"What are you playing?" 

"You should know. It was your request, remember?" 

She didn't. 

"Bach," he reminded, and her mouth fell open just slightly.

"How do you even remember these things?" 

"You remember numbers; I remember...pretty much everything," he said. A complicated passage made him lose his grin, concentrating. There was something offsetting about the music, some way that the right and left hand parts came together that made it difficult to merely listen, and the piece was over just as Olivia'd gotten used to it. He closed the lid over the keys and got up, moving on to the next instrument.

She traveled with him around the room, orbiting the pianos as he played. On each one he played a different song, similar to the first but not quite the same, each with that same odd, complicated feeling.

"What are you looking for?" she asked him on the third piano.

"I'll know when I find it," he replied, and he found it a few tries later, in an upright Yamaha. After finishing one more iteration of the just-held-together pieces, he stopped playing and folded his hands in his lap.

"I think this is it," he said. Olivia came around to where he was sitting.

"Yeah?"

He curled his hands over the keys again.

"Yeah," he said, and he descended into something that cascaded, rose and fell, something for which he used the right pedal constantly and that felt like a dense cloud of sound compared to the pieces he'd been playing before. Whereas he'd been playing upright and measured, now he was released, his body following his hands. Soft notes made his fingers hover, his head tilt up and his back tighten. There were strong passages, too, and for these he leaned into the keys, his chin down and the muscles moving distinctly in his forearms. His body pressed forward in a unified front, negotiating for tone.

The piece turned louder as he went on, rising like flood water; his hands spread ten keys deep and hitting several notes between, sound falling in sheets. The floor resonated under Olivia's feet, and when she leaned against the edge of the piano's frame, the vibrations caught her in the hip, moving straight through her bones.

 _Jesus,_ she thought, _this is going to be in our house._

The piece tapered off with a bittersweet phrase played with one hand. As the last note faded, Peter pulled himself off the keyboard, lifted his toes from the pedal and let the room go thickly silent again.

"What was _that_?" Olivia asked. She'd been holding her breath and the words were too airy to hide that. Peter smiled, but not the way he would have if he'd wanted to make fun of her for it.

"Rachmaninoff," he said. He looked thoughtfully at the golden letters stamped below the bar that would hold sheet music until he had it memorized, and he smoothed his fingers along the keys one more time. He didn't even ask what it cost.

 

 

"What were you playing all night?" she whispered to Peter as M. Werner Tisch wrote some notes on the invoice. "The Bach, not the other one."

"Inventions," he said. M. Werner looked up.

"The _inventiones_ and _sinfonias_ ," he said. "Intended for young students, which you clearly are not."

Peter nodded affably. "Which I am not," he repeated.

" _Auffrichtig,_ " M. Werner said, going back to his work. He signed the slip, tore off a copy and handed the rest to Peter. "Very good, Mr. Bishop," he said. "And now I will close here."

"Absolutely," Peter said. "Been a pleasure." He folded the invoice and tucked it into his jacket. He opened the office door for Olivia to step out. "Coffee?" he asked her. "There's a diner around the corner."

"It's almost nine," she said, "so coffee: no, but milkshakes: yes." Peter laughed, not so much at the milkshakes but because he felt good: about himself, about things.

"Good," he said. They walked back down the hallway and through the stenciled door. Their wood-paneled chariot awaited.

" _Auffrichtig_ ," Olivia said as they crossed the parking lot, "that's 'straightforward.'"

"It was a notation Bach wrote for the inventions," Peter said. He stopped at the car and spoke to her over the roof. "By playing straightforwardly, the two hands come together, yet remain independent." He looked at her mildly, then opened the car door and got in.

Olivia stood outside for another moment, looking up at the night sky and watching her breath in the air. He thought he was so damn subtle.


	46. January: Milkshakes

### Milkshakes

Olivia took sips from the cold steel shaker that held the half of her milkshake that didn't fit in the sundae glass. Ever since they'd left the piano store she'd felt jittery and oddly thrilled, like she'd had too much coffee, though she hadn't. It was Peter who was having the coffee, across from her with his fingers threaded through the handle of his stout diner mug. The liquid inside was steaming and not nearly opaque, almost certainly diluted with hot water to a fifty-percent solution.

Olivia was having thoughts she hadn't invited but didn't particularly mind at the moment. She imagined it came from seeing Peter in a different way, seeing him demonstrate an ability she'd never really observed: not that way, not like that. Pictures of it were filling her head, except in them he had no shirt and she could see the way his back moved while he played, and from there it was a shockingly short leap to wondering what _other_ things he could do with the grace and force he'd applied to the keys. She sunk her gaze into the gleaming tan of her chocolate malt, hiding like an ostrich while she indulged in speculation about proficient hands and bare skin. 

The thoughts were out of her control, but she regarded them with amusement as something novel and transient, like a wind-up toy that leaps off the table and kicks itself catatonic on the floor. Harmless. And maybe she should have stopped herself, but she was enjoying it and it all made too much _sense_ to her. Peter was handsome, attractive, capable, and it wasn't that she'd just noticed but that she was seeing him in a way that she hadn't before. 

She'd been comfortable with the sameness and security of their relationship for so long. They had a good thing going: a family. Yet, she'd kissed him, and he'd kissed her. When he said 'sweetheart,' now, he meant it: each instance an apology and an erasure of a time he'd sliced at her with that same word. He'd told her he _loved_ her, for god's sake. So there was nothing wrong (and, she truly believed, nothing unwanted or uninvited) about the way she was turning him over in her mind. 

Besides, just thinking about it wouldn't change anything between them. Mere thoughts wouldn't force anyone's hand. And Olivia'd always been able to maintain control of a situation: any situation, all of the time. This would be no different.

 

 

Olivia smiled into her milkshake as Peter watched her over the rim of his cup. As he kept he eyes on her, something changed which Peter noticed but Olivia did not. At first he thought it was a change in the lighting, and then he thought it might have been the music, but finally he realized it was _her._ She was different; changed: he could feel it, like a ripple in the bath of her psychic overflow. It felt honest and familiar and he knew in a second exactly what it was. 

He watched her, relieved and scared at the same time. He was tempted to forego the effort of the mental blinders she made him wear, just to see the images she was pasting up behind her eyes, the ones that were making her stare into the repeating mirrors and glaze over like a hot donut. If she figured out she was in love with him and decided _not_ to pursue anything, those little daydreams would be the only consolation prize he'd ever get.

Instead, he contented himself with the buzz of radiant feeling that he always picked up from her, whether or not he wanted to. He drank in her thrill at being secretly daring, seeing him _like that_ while he sat across from her, drinking coffee, and it didn't take a genius or a mind-reader to pick up the sexual overtones (though he had the advantage of being both). 

Olivia's glance flickered to him for a moment, and stuck on his worried smile. "What's wrong?" she asked. Peter tried to shore up his expression but his effort was B+ at best. He stirred his coffee though he hadn't added anything.

"Just thinking," he said.

He put his spoon down. There were so many things he wanted to say that would have to wait for a precise moment in the future. Most boiled down to, 

_'please.'_ He put down his coffee, and, despite knowing it would get him a weird look, reached for her hand under the table to hold it in both of his. Olivia's weird look appeared on cue, but he looked back at her as benevolently as he could. He chose his words carefully, hoping the association would help. "I'm glad you're here."

Olivia smiled wide, tilting her head down to look up at him coquettishly. The thoughts were making her bold. 

_Sweetheart,_ Peter thought, _please._

"Me too," she said.

 

 

They got home late. Peter had been so wired by the piano business that the caffeine had burned him out. He stumbled up to bed while Olivia locked herself in the bathroom.

In the mirror, her irises wicked up the ink of her pupils until almost no green remained. Her thoughts about Peter had turned out to be stickier than expected. Not so easily packed away. She had a solid flush on her chest that wasn't fading, and she was going to have to go share a bed and pretend that things hadn't changed because she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to change them.

She wondered if Peter knew. She wondered if it were possible he _didn't_ know, despite his assurances that he kept tight control over his abilities. There was no way to be sure. Even if he figured her out, he'd never say so. He'd politely ignore her racing heartbeats and her too-measured breathing, and if she ever decided to move forward he would try to seem surprised. 

But when Olivia got back to their room, freshly witch-hazeled and ready for bed, she realized that Peter _did_ know. He had to, because why else would he be wearing a long-sleeved shirt and regarding her like something tragic had happened? She almost laughed.

"Ready for bed?" he said. Even his words were cushioned, padded. His caution made her want to be even more obvious, to look at him with her dark eyes and kiss him. But she recognized her impulsiveness for what it was, and took advantage of the space and time he was offering. She slipped into bed beside him, and one or both of them were warmer than usual because they had to skim two blankets off the pile. Peter played big spoon, his arms going around her to hide any awareness on his part that he should do things differently. Olivia closed her eyes and smiled.

"Goodnight," she said, hoping her tone was a good balance of nonchalance and affection.

"Goodnight, sweetheart," he said.


	47. January: The Dream

### The Dream

There was a piano in her dream. A man was playing. A conveyor belt came from the back of the piano, and on the belt little ice cream sundaes emerged from the sounding board. It was Peter but it wasn't Peter doing the playing. Then it was a stranger playing, and Peter was in front of her, taking sundaes off the belt and putting them into her hands. They disappeared as he replaced them, her palms staying perfectly empty.

Then he lost focus, looking at her instead of his work. The conveyor belt accelerated and the ice creams began to pile up, smashing together and jamming. She looked at Peter accusingly but he didn't even care that there was ice cream everywhere. He stepped toward her and suddenly he was wearing nothing, absolutely _nothing_ , and she put her hands out to push him away but they wouldn't reach him, no matter how far she pushed.

"It's okay," he was repeating. "It's just ice cream." But it was messy and it was everywhere.

"Peter," she protested. Ice cream was hitting the floor in half-melted scoops. Vanilla and chocolate beneath her feet. She wasn't wearing shoes; it was sticky but counter-intuitively warm.

"'Livia, come up here," he said to her, and she saw that there were stairs to a door she hadn't noticed. He put out a hand to her and she took it and they went through the door and ended up in the lab at Harvard. She wasn't surprised. The sensory deprivation tank was in the middle of the room. She went straight to it.

"Help me," she said, pulling the heavy doors open. Peter stood behind her, watching. Olivia walked into the tank and lay down in the water; the electrodes had at some point become attached to her skin, and she could hear the beep-beep-tick of the monitors from somewhere outside. Peter stood in silhouette above her, looking down. He had his arms outstretched, his hands on the doors, but instead of closing them on her, he came inside and closed them behind him.

In the opaque darkness Olivia could hear the faint dips of his limbs into the water, the ripples of his movement lapping at the parts of her skin not submerged. Then his legs came together between hers and the rest of him brushed over her, invisible. She could hear herself breathing but he was quieter, and she only knew he was there because she could feel his exhales on her lips. Though everything seemed irregular and out of place she wanted to kiss him, so she tilted her head up and did it and it was shooting an arrow into the sun, his body falling on her like the sky.

She felt his hand touch the back of her neck, a spreading heat there, but then more hands on her shoulders, more hands than Peter should have, and she was confused until the palm-shaped pressure over her neck spread deeper, under her skin and into her head, and she started to feel little pings in her back as Peter learned how to do what she realized he was doing. At first it was almost haphazard, hit-or-miss, as he figured out which lines led to her fingers and which led to her toes. Little sensory bomb drops exploded in her elbow, her thigh, her side. But he was a genius, and he learned fast, splitting the signals finer and finer.

In minutes he was directing with such acuity that she didn't quite know how to feel about it. His hands were absolutely still, resting unmoved on her shoulders, but she felt as clearly as anything the piquing of nerves in places he'd never actually seen, places still covered by layers of cloth and inches of dark water. It felt strange, but good.

"I didn't know you could-" she whispered. She stopped short of saying what she thought he was doing. Peter was silent in the dark and she didn't know where he was looking or what his face looked like. Was he doing this for her, for himself, or to prove he could do it? She put her hands between their pushed-together chests, a useless barrier to make herself feel less defenseless, but she didn't ask him to stop because she didn't want him to. In fact, it was becoming imperative that he continue. He was spreading his reach like bleeding ink, soaking through her nerves and she was seeing things in the dark: bright things, beautiful things, strings and spots of light.

"Peter," she whispered. "Oh my god." She was past self-consciousness. Her back arched. She reached for him to stabilize herself and all she felt was skin. His touch exploded in her head, the inkwell overturned on her brain. She started to shake. "Peter," she gasped. He lowered his head to hers. She could feel him smiling.

 

 

Olivia woke up through a shivering orgasm. In the seconds it took her to claw her way fully out of sleep, Peter blinked awake as well. She posed in a stretch, embarrassed, hiding her face.

"'Livia," Peter said. She could feel his eyes on the back of her head and panic iced her stomach. Keeping her face as even as she could, she glanced over at him. He was looking at her with wide eyes, asking her something without speaking the question, but she gave nothing away. After a minute his expression faded and he turned away from her. "Nothing. Weird dream," he said. He waved his hand over his head, clearing his mind. "Morning."

"Yeah," she said, dazed, and she rolled out of bed abruptly. She mumbled something about being first in the shower and then she was gone. 

 


	48. January: The Decision

### The Decision

Peter had ways of dealing with stressful situations. His most effective was to think to himself: _I am the smartest person in the room._ It calmed him to believe that he would see danger before it became dangerous, and that he would have the ingenuity to build himself an exit door if he found himself trapped. It wasn't working well for him now, because this stressful situation had nothing to do with intelligence nor escapes.

Last night he'd seen the moment Olivia had fallen in love with him, witnessed it as she'd sipped a milkshake and he'd held his own heart in his hands and pretended it was a mug of coffee. Last night he'd gone to bed with her as platonically as ever, and had participated in a melting, blinding, mutual and unconscious display of an ability he wasn't sure how he'd developed.

This morning he'd rolled over in bed after she'd gone to take a shower and stared wide-eyed at the wall, no idea what to do. There was not one point out of his 190 that would give him the upper hand. None of it was up to him.

 

 

Olivia allowed herself eight full hours of the luxury of not dealing with what had happened. Even so, it cropped up every so often throughout the day, hot and begging, crowding out her thoughts about their case. She disliked that: it agitated and distracted her and she wanted it to go away. It was bad enough to have _had_ that dream, but as the day went on she became more and more sure that Peter had been there in that dream _with her_. And that was too much. Too close. Too fast. The worst was that, when she started thinking about the dream, it would replay in such vivid detail that she found herself pausing obliviously to enjoy it, not even realizing she'd stopped listening to whomever was talking until they called her name a little too loudly to ignore.

"Sorry, Walter," she'd say, and Walter would tilt his head and inquire into her health. "No, I'm fine," she would insist, and she would wish miserably that Peter weren't standing there with his father because it made her feel transparent and foolish. 

But she had no idea, really -- because when she recalled the dream, Peter _felt_ it, his spine straightening to avoid the telltale shiver and his usually analytical brain losing the thread of the conversation. He couldn't not listen to her: he couldn't. He was in the middle of a tug of war between what might be his future and what could soon be his past, and he felt like he'd been holding his breath since he woke up.

He wanted a chance, at least, just one, to show her that she was _it_ for him, and that he was it for her _._ She had to know, like he knew, that the inevitability she felt towards their intersection was because it was right and needed and so long in coming. His body ached, on edge, and towards the end of the day he was thinking that it would be better to hear her say nothan to go on, uncertain like this, for another day.

 

 

By the time Olivia unlocked the car to drive home, her dread of confronting the situation was gone, replaced by a vague certainty that there was only one possible outcome. Her body had decided in the absence of her mind: her bed made for her while she was gone. Her hands steadied her on the steering wheel.

Peter was in the passenger seat, staring dead ahead. He didn't try to make conversation, didn't turn the radio on, didn't distract her in any way because he could feel her scale tipping towards him and he didn't even want to breathe if it might skew things. His hands felt cold, everything felt cold, except that his face was on fire and so was his chest and his-

"You okay?" Olivia said. Peter gripped the handhold in the door. He wasn't used to being nervous. Everything in their experiments had taught him to simply be open to what might come, but this was different. He was tempted to open the door and roll out onto the pavement, the gravel burns welcome in contrast to the tension. He wanted her to stop the car. He wanted to put her seat back and show her who he could be, with her.

"Fine," he clipped. 

Olivia nodded acknowledgment. Having blazed past the point of decision, she was tangled in execution. She was afraid, granted, and she didn't know how to start it or how to make it work, but she'd accepted that it would happen and was already planning, already thinking. Peter's presence wasn't exactly helping, but she knew he knew she was thinking about it, and she was taking a sort of reassuring joy from his anxiety. It could only be because he wanted her.

At a red light, Olivia was particularly overcome by a vivid imagining of him hovering over her with an expression on her face she'd never seen, a sound of effort and surrender on his lips, and she didn't see when the light turned green. Neither did Peter. It was the car behind them that brought them both out of it, laying on the horn. She looked to Peter to apologize and he had the most sincere, pained expression on his face, his eyebrows raised together and his lips barely touching, and she couldn't look away. She almost forgot, again, to press her foot to the gas pedal.

After that, as they made the last few turns and traveled the last few blocks, Olivia experimented. She pulled things to the forefront, projecting on her biggest mental screen images that grew more and more explicit. She watched out of the corner of her eye as Peter arranged himself into awkward positions in his seat, as he stared out the window and tried to regulate his breathing, as his eyes turned bright and dark, and she knew it would be all right.

"This had better be relevant to your decision-making process," he whispered finally, admitting and inviting at the same time. He was watching stars and clouds and tree branches flying by through the window as he huddled down in his seat, and they were starting to blur together.

It would be better than all right.


	49. December: Metaphor

### Metaphor

She found Peter sitting up in bed, those sleek shoulders curled around a book. The book didn't matter. For the rest of her life, she'd never be able to remember the title, or the color, or anything about it, because suddenly Peter was so goddamn good to look at that she couldn't spare rods or cones for anything else. She paused at the door, closing and locking it behind her.

Peter waited for her to say something, watching her with an open expression. He had an idea of what she was about to do, but the ability of the human brain to conceptualize the divine was so limited. He stared at her, hopeful and fearful, like he didn't think she'd go through with it. 

"Peter," she said, and, _I don't know how to ask for this,_ she thought. Peter's skin glimmered silently, a testament to her faintest apprehension while her hands knotted together. She wanted him to infer, to save her the indignity of specification, yet all he gave her was his unwavering focus. She couldn't tell if or howhe was reading her, just hoped fervently that he was. With a deep breath she pushed her thoughts to the surface, waiting for him to skim them, to take them up and, through them, understand what she wanted. For once, it would be 100% okay with her.

"Hey," Peter breathed. He tried to tack on ' _ready for bed?'_ but it just wouldn't happen. He had nothing else to say. Then she walked toward him and it was like he couldn't help it: he reached out, his way.

Olivia felt him invisibly on her back, his mental touch more like a curling wind than the force she'd expected. She didn't remember it being so gentle, so controlled. He looked at her with the simplest of questions: _Yes or no?_ And, _I love you_ , which wasn't a question at all but answered several of hers. 

She moved forward. The push at her back was toying with a set of nerves she thought he'd have taken longer to get to. She was weaving on her feet and he was fixing her with those blisteringly intelligent eyes and if he wanted her closer then who was she to argue? 

"Okay," she whispered under her breath. 

He reached for her -- the old way, this time -- with arms extended. Olivia could see his pulse in his neck. She could see the pink of his lips and the short, fast rises of his chest. When she was close enough she could see him looking up at her with pupils like black holes, pulling her in and turning her red. Once she was within his reach, he held her by the shoulders: gently, but so devoured by want that he could not let go.

The moment rested in Olivia's hands: she was the line between The Way Things Were and The Way Things Would Be. She looked down at Peter with soft green eyes, the same that had seen and judged him from the beginning, and absolved him of every 'sweetheart,' every desertion and every threat. Images came to her in a flood, not from him but of him: Peter comforting her against his chest. Peter laying with her under blankets in an ice-cold room. Peter, just Peter, his sweet, guarded face watching her do ridiculous things and hoping against hope that she'd succeed. His lithe body in nothing but boxers in bed beside her, the intimate slide of his long leg between hers as they fell asleep, and a kiss in a dark car with lips that tasted like ice cream _._

Peter found no faults with her catalogue of memories. He stretched up off his reading pillows, let his hand slide up her neck and guided her gently toward their intersection. He kissed her slowly, more relaxed than either of them felt. 

"Peter," she said, and she felt like she could have an entire conversation using only his name. Impatient, she climbed up onto the bed, her knees astride his over the blankets. He could feel the warmth of her legs against his, and if he could have done it he would have made the quilts between them disappear. His hand moved over her face, achingly gentle, unbearably persuasive.

"Don't be scared," he pleaded, only because it was the one thing he'd wanted to remember to say to her. 

Olivia smiled. The Glimmer was trailing like a sparkler over Peter's maple-sugar skin, but not because she was scared. "I'm not," she said.

Peter laughed, not because it was funny but because he couldn't quite contain himself. His skin was tingling everywhere and he was on a bed of marzipan happiness. Olivia's hair refracted the moonlight that came in through the window, and for a second he saw her the way she'd seen him on that night when everything had changed. It _was_ beautiful, it really was. 

"Oh my god," Olivia said, shaking her head at his tender expression (though her mouth was carved into a smile and her words sounded like half-laughter, themselves). Peter rubbed his hands over the curves of her hips and watched her. She was so beautiful, so happy, and he knew that he was both of those things, same as she.

"'Livia," he said. His eyebrows raised and his smile faltered and for a moment his face looked almost sorrowful in its joy. "Come on," he urged her, taking the edges of her tank top in his fingertips. She paused and met his fingers with his: drawing the stretchy fabric up, creeping it over her breasts, sweeping it over her head where it gathered her hair into a blonde comet. Peter put his hands to her skin and sighed headily.

"You now," she reminded him, unabashedly running her index fingers between the waistband of his boxers and the hot skin beneath. He took a breath and forgot to let it out, and he could not possibly have gotten those shorts off any faster except that she was sitting inconveniently upon him and he had to toss her off first.

She landed on her back beside him and was disoriented for a moment, her hair falling around and on her, squinting with her wide smile and crowing gleefully as she bounced back from the depths of the mattress. He was on her again as fast as she re-opened her eyes. Pushing the quilts aside, she arched up to meet him as he bent over her, her arms hooked around small of his back so that his hips would brace against hers. 

Naked Peter, on top of her, should have shocked her, at least a little bit. But it felt normal, instead, not like they'd done it before but like they were long overdue. He was heavy, though maybe just by comparison, because the last person in bed with Olivia had been John, who had faded further than she'd ever thought he could, and who now felt like cottonwood fluff in her memory. Two years was a long time, she realized, long enough to have built an outpost for John's legacy and to have relegated him there. It was Peter's time now; Peter was alive and beautiful in front of her, and she was ready, finally, to enjoy him. 

She took his head between her palms and pulled him within a finger's breadth of her face, holding him there, breathing with him, their smiles reflecting. He was glimmering steadily now, his irises like solar flares. She felt peaceful, maybe too peaceful: she had him so close and now she wasn't sure how to segue into something...less peaceful. He arched his eyebrows.

"Sweetheart," he murmured, "you keep me waiting any longer and you're asking for all kinds of trouble."

"I'm not sure if you know me very well," she whispered in return, "but I'm kind of a fan of trouble."

She grinned and he pushed through the gate of her hands to kiss her fiercely.


	50. January: Simile

### Simile

Peter couldn't see Olivia's eyes from so close to her face, but she was radiating intensity. There were so many things he'd been wanting for so long, and now that he had the chance he was chasing specifics but there were a thousand specifics and they were all crowded into the first spot on the list. His attention was scattered and he felt disordered, frantic, too slow to keep up with his own directives. Kiss her mouth. Taste her skin. Make her happy. He worried that this would be the sum of his experience: that his endless hoarded desires would overwhelm his focus, would refract the moment into single colors at the expense of the rainbow. Though it didn't seem he had any real choice: there was only the immediacy of feeling, the gravity of his life and hers intersecting.

Her lips were rice paper dipped in sake, soft and aggressive, and where she kissed his skin there was friction cut with heated breath. His head was cloudy, fuzzy, hot behind the eyes and he stared at the ceiling with her mouth on his neck, seeing nothing. Trails of her hair slid over his chest, painfully delicate; his skin tightened into goosebumps in one sweeping full-body ache. He breathed softly but audibly when she reached his collarbone with her tongue. 

 

 

Above Olivia, Peter's body was half real and half composite of every memory she had of him: his enveloping hug in their shared, dusky living room with arms that wouldn't let her go after he told her he loved her. The long warm cushion of him on the couch with her, watching NOVA or some late-night anything, saying nothing about it when she falls asleep on his shoulder. The lonely warmth of him stretched out behind her in bed like the summer sun. That Peter was this Peter, assembly of the same parts and pieces, bittersweet and earnest, and the echoes of their past were deeper than the bottom of her memory. 

She touched him harder than she needed to; she dug in with fingers and nails. If he felt attacked she could be sorry later, but the give of his flesh was vital and when he responded to her with tiny flinches or high breaths it meant that she was as surely in his world as he was in hers. She still distrusted the glimmer; months ago it had brutally corrected her misconception that his existence was a natural fact, and she'd never felt entirely confident enough that it wouldn't happen again.

 

 

Peter felt her crescent nails as she stamped them into his skin. He arched away from the sharpest pain but made himself lean into the rest. It reassured her, he could tell, and he would have let her draw blood for no reason but that she wanted to. 

As he slid down her body, every nerve sent its signal at once. Each touch, each brush was another molotov cocktail to the base of his spine. It was the sensation in his chest, first, that got him: each fine hair displaced, her breasts a landscape he'd never seen. But then their bellies shifting together was riveting, her marshmallow-powder skin smooth over muscle tight with two years of tension: the best kind, wickedly unresolved. He dragged his hands down her sides and she produced a lion's purr in the back of her throat that Peter felt through her chest, reverberating like an echo of the engine under his bones.

Anticipation started to tap the mental resources usually allocated for heartbeats and breath, so Peter pulled himself together to adjust the cant of his hips to the tilt of her thighs, and pushed. His mouth opened to dissipate the sensation that filled him; his breath stopped and started and his eyes shut deliberately as he reached for control. He said little words, halves and eighths of words.

Olivia felt him tighten everywhere, inside her and out. Even his feet flexed hard, twisting the quilts, twisting her. He pushed his hips against her sharply, again, but the rest of him stayed stone-still and Olivia was sure he hadn't meant to move, which was too bad because that was all she could think about and if he wouldn't keep moving, she would. She grabbed him around the back and used his iron posture for traction when she ground her hips into his. It got her a despairing sigh and a violent, immediate kiss as he dug an arm under her and held her like a vice.

"'Liv," he said, because he lacked the air to throw away on her full name, " _slow_." His eyebrows were up, begging, and he was trying so hard to be still that he was shaking. Olivia had no idea why he suddenly thought she was going to start listening to him. He had her hips immobilized but not her hands. She drew her fingertips lightly over the small of his back, barely touching him, and his muscles jumped involuntarily, arching his back and pulling his head back. Somehow, he managed to roll them both over, burying his back safely in their sheets, away from her hands. He looked up at her with tight eyes and she looked back defiantly, and he realized she was nowhere near as far gone as he. It was a problem he wanted to address. He picked his head up off the pillow and guided her forward with a palm on her back, his lips reaching for her breast. Her mouth opened into the air.

"Peter," she said, letting his name drop off into a curled, coiled sound. He smiled, trekking the thorough warmth of his mouth across her chest. Her shoulders folded around him, enclosing him, her breasts soft on his cheeks, his cheeks rough against her. He nuzzled her chest with the bridge of his nose, his forehead resting between her collarbones. The sheen on her skin met the same on his, not wet but halfway there, an imperfect seal between them. She smelled like herself, but _more._ Everything was hazy, wavering like a mirage.

Peter sighed from the bottom of his chest and arched his neck to kiss her lips again; needing to return to her to verify both the event and his part in it, that she was really doing this with him and that he was doing good by her. Olivia empathized. When she kissed him back, her ears hummed, a white noise that muted everything else with its subsuming quiet. 

"Pe-" she started, and the rest of the word was pulled right through her throat by his clever mouth. But she recovered quickly: "Peter," she said, firmer, "we're going to do this again, right?" Peter fought his eyes open on a shaky inhale and looked at her. The humidity of their barely-there sweat evaporated between their faces.

"God, yes," he rattled.

"Then let's go slow _next time._ " She leaned back on his hips and Peter's breath staggered into his chest. He wanted to watch, he really did, but his eyes had rolled back in his head and they wouldn't be useful for a while. What he felt was stupefying, paralyzing pleasure, and he wanted to cry to her that he was too close to be going so fast but she had to know that already from the faces he was sure he was making. He had his hands on her knees, gripping way too hard, and his arousal was so intense it felt like panic.

Olivia smiled, her hips rocking, lifting, riding. She forgave Peter for his incapacitation; it only made her proud. He was so beautifully laid out beneath her that the whole thing felt relaxed, awesome, like she'd hauled herself over the top of a mountain to see miles of glittering wilderness extending in all directions. She let her head fall forward as she sank down around him again. She felt free, released, relieved, and there was no harm in showing him. Her happiness expanded infinitely around her and for a moment her experience filled the universe -- only one of them, perhaps, but the whole, entire thing -- and when it started to gather backward momentum she knew it would come back to her more than she could contain.

Peter, by comparison, was a burning barn, charred posts trembling, consumed even before he fell apart. His body curled like paper ash around her as his eyes pressed shut, their creases extending across each temple and the groove in his forehead distinct as paint. He bent tightly toward Olivia, his shoulders coming up off the bed, his head to her heart.

Then, Olivia stopped moving. 

Peter's concern fought breathlessly to the surface and he even managed to halfway open his dizzy eyes but it was so much easier to check on her _his_ way, to go into her head and know everything immediately and effortlessly. He was barely inside when she met him with a wall of still heat that he recognized as the precursor to a particularly atomic shock. He backed out quickly but not quickly enough, and her orgasm roared through his head as he felt its transduction into contractions and releases, tens of muscles from her ribs to her knees, rhythmic and strong, sending a flush like spilled wine up over her chest. There was the strangest sound, one that didn't make sense but he didn't bother to think about it.

Peter wasn't sure how he'd lasted as long as he had, but he didn't make it past this point; obliterated, he shivered through one last forward surge of his body, expending what force he had left in a final push to touch bottom, and he froze there. Relief pounded through him, waves of heat prickling with something that whipped his heart to exhaustion.

When it passed, it left them both peacefully empty. Peter reached around Olivia and pulled her body down over her knees, holding her tightly, hiding his face in her skin.

Neither of them had anything left for a shower.

 


	51. January: Allergies

### Allergies

It was three in the morning when Peter woke her up, sneezing furiously and sitting up in bed.

"Peter?" she said groggily. "What's going on?" He was trying to scratch an itch between his shoulder blades and failing hard.

"Allergies," he gasped between sneezes.

"To _what?_ " she asked. 

"No. Idea," he said, rolling out of bed. He stumbled off to the bathroom and she heard the shower start. 

Two minutes later, Peter reappeared at the door. He was dripping wet and holding his towel only halfheartedly over his hips, which made sense of the shower that was still running in the background. His hair was tufted into little spikes and drops of water were running into his eyes, making him blink and squint like a little kid in a sprinkler.

"'Livia," he said in a voice so measured and calm that Olivia knew he was going to say something completely strange. "Is there _cat hair_ on our bed?" Olivia didn't bother mentioning that they had no cat; she just checked, and maybe it was _because_ they had no cat that she almost expected to find it. And she did. She held a few hairs up between her fingers and Peter started talking again but Olivia was remembering something else.

"I swear, if Walter has a cat somewhere in this house... How could he not remember I'm allergic? How could he have gotten a cat? I mean, logistically, _how_ did that man get a cat?"

"Peter," Olivia said. "Peter, wait."

Peter rubbed his blotchy chest and reached to scratch his back. "What?"

"There's no cat. I mean, not here."

Peter stared at her despite being twisted into awkward positions. "Evidence says otherwise."

"No, what I mean is...last night..." she rolled her hand in the air, hoping for an assist or an autocomplete, but Peter just nodded. "I heard something weird. I didn't really think about it because I was...you know..."

"Out of your mind?" he grinned.

"Yeah, right, that," she said, but she was smiling too. "Anyway, I would have sworn I heard a cat. Not outside, but right there, like it was next to me."

"And what, you just assumed that Peter Bishop makes weird cat noises during sex? You know, I'm glad we're having this conversation." He paused. "But. Actually. Now that you say that...I heard it, too."

"Peter. You know exactly where that cat hair came from."

He looked at her.

"Think about it," she said. "When was the last time I saw a cat in this room?"


	52. January: Resonance

### Resonance

They brought the situation to Walter over breakfast. They would've just told him the truth, but they didn't want to deal with the fanfare, or the possibility that he'd greet Broyles at their next meeting with a salutatory _'Agent Dunham and my son are paired sexually!'_ As a result, they had their story outlined well before they sat down at the kitchen table, where Walter was sitting amidst multiple boxes of junky cereal. They listened to Walter talk about some weird dream while they shook out Boo Berries and Cocoa Krispies like fat confetti into mismatched bowls, and when there was an opening, Peter went for it.

"So, Walter," Peter said, "something kind of funny happened last night." He could feel Olivia tensing up from across the table. He wanted to nudge her foot with his to reassure her but he was pretty sure that would be a mistake.

"Yes, I know," Walter said proudly, "you and Olivia had intercourse!" Olivia's jaw froze around a mouthful of spoon and snap-crackle-popping. "Unless the 'something funny' to which you refer was not intercourse at all, but something which occurred _during_ intercourse," Walter continued, looking concerned _._ "In which case I'm not certain I could be of much assistance. I'm afraid I'm rusty," he said, sticking and rumbling on the 'r'. _Rrrusty._

"No. Just no. Olivia had a _bad dream_ ," Peter said slowly, emphatically, his chin to his chest and his eyes as far toward the ceiling as he could get them.

"I'm not _that_ rusty, son," Walter said, the edges of his smile propping up his cheeks.

" _Walter._ "

"I had a nightmare, Walter," Olivia said. She hadn't dared to take another spoonful; the Krispies had stopped snapping and the milk was turning brown. "That's all."

"I once woke from a dream about making love to an Pan-Am stewardess to find that I had eaten an entire tub of peach sherbet!" 

"Okay, nevermind; this can't end well," Peter said abruptly, dropping his spoon into his bowl and pushing back from the table. "See you at the lab."

"Peter, sit," Olivia said, and Peter surprised her by actually sitting back down at the table, albeit with his head in his hands. "Walter," she continued, "during my dream, one or both of us crossed over. We don't know how, but it happened. We found cat hair." Walter lowered his eyes, ponderously arranging his floating Count Chocula into fullerene patterns. 

Walter looked bewildered. "We have a cat?" he asked. "Did I bring it home?" 

Peter sighed deeply. He found it in himself to look his father in the eyes again, refusing to feel like some high schooler caught in the living room with his girlfriend. He didn't have to acknowledge anything but the necessary facts. "All right, Walter," he said, "from the top: in the alternate universe, a cat lady lives in our house and sleeps in our room. I wake up this morning and I'm having this allergy attack. What am I allergic to? Cats. What's all over the sheets? Cat hair. How'd it get there? We're pretty sure we brought it with us. Except neither of us actually remembers going, so we couldn't have been over there for very long. And, no, I have no idea how any of this happened."

Walter pondered.

"Get your clothes, then," he said, and Peter waited for specificity. "Your pajamas," Walter said, "the ones you were wearing when you crossed. We can compare the microbes in your sheets to those in your clothing. If you did, in fact, cross over you would have picked up distinctly different microbial fauna." Peter pursed his lips. Olivia slid the cereal box in front of her face and pretended to read the back. Walter shook his head.

"What is it?" Peter said.

"It's a shame," Walter said. "It would make perfect sense if you had been having intercourse at the time you crossed. But a bad dream? Certainly not. After all, we've seen what happens when Olivia has a nightmare, haven't we, Peter?" Peter slumped back in his chair. Olivia nudged his ankle with her foot under the table, and it wasn't for the reason he'd wanted to do that earlier. It was a surrender. He arched an eyebrow at her. "Your funeral," he told her under his breath, and she only shrugged. "Okay," he conceded to Walter, "let's say, hypothetically, that we had sex. Hypothetically."

"Well _in that case_ ," Walter said, allowing the hypothetical to carry for no good reason except that he wanted Peter to see that he cared. "You have quite a protective instinct toward Miss Dunham, which I believewould manifest itself at anytime during which she would not be capable of defending herself."

"Obviously you're of the opinion that sex would be one of those times," Peter said. "Which makes me question the kinds of sex you've been having."

"Not the entire act, Peter. I've found that even a highly aroused partner is quite capable of inflicting many varieties of-"

"Skip it," Peter ordered, and Walter complied immediately, as if the needle on the record player in his mind had been lifted and dropped somewhere else.

"During orgasm," he started anew, "the autonomic nervous system commandeers many bodily resources, often resulting in generalized weakness and lack of awareness. I believe that during this time, Peter, you would feel responsible for Olivia's safety." Walter paused. He laid one hand out on the table and walked his other hand on two fingers. "Ordinarily, this might trigger such an event as occurred previously."

"My debut as the World's Most Unconscious Bodyguard?"

"Indeed. _But,_ if you were similarly incapacitated at the same time, unable to simply 'wake up' and come to Olivia's aid, then-" Walter made his fingers jump over to the other side of his arm. He looked up seriously at Peter. "Simultaneous orgasm is a tricky beast to tame. Congra-"

"But whythe Other Side?" Olivia interrupted. 

"Because Peter wasn't aware enough to protect you," Walter said, "and you weren't aware enough to protect yourself. The best way to protect both of you for that period of extreme vulnerability was to go somewhere where no-one would expect you to be, somewhere as far as possible from where you are, and then to come back in an instant, when you had regained awareness of your surroundings. I suppose that if Peter's talent were for travel _within_ this universe, you may have brought back a different souvenir."

"Wait a minute," Peter said. "It sounds like you're saying _I_ did this. On purpose."

"I expect that you did."

"Seriously? Walter, come on. I can walk into a rift and not dissolve, okay, but I can't cross over, let alone get back, _let alone_ take someone else with me. In my limited experience, crossing over required a machine the size of a swingset."

"A swingset?" Olivia said.

"I was a kid when I went through," he told her. "The swingset was practically a standard measurement."

"Mesomerism, Peter," Walter said. Peter frowned.

"Mesmerism? That's mind control? Hypnosis?" Olivia said.

"Not mesmerism," Peter said, "mesomerism. It's a sort of...chemical resonance. Like Schrodinger's Cat for electrons. Here, I'll show you." He took one of Walter's cereal boxes and shook a few Boo Berries onto the table, making a row of three: Purple-Pink-Purple.

"Let's say we're describing a molecule. We have our two elements, Pink and Purple. They stick together by sharing pairs of electrons: one here," he said, fitting two Count Choculas between the Pink and one of the Purples, "and one here." He Count Chocula'd the other Purple, too. But what if, when these elements pool their electrons, they come up with an extra electron pair?" He wiggled two more Count Choculas with his finger, sliding them from one side of the molecule to the other.

"We could arrange it two ways, right? Double bond with this Purple, or double bond with the other. And, weirdly, it kind of ends up both ways. Switching between the two -- or that potential to switch -- that's resonance, in a nutshell." 

"Olivia," Walter said, "you and I have bodies from this universe. Peter does not. While the same biochemical matter exists in both this universe and its parallel, there is a significant difference between the frequencies at which the universes resonate. Peter's body once existed within a different frequency, and I believe his body has retained a physical memory of its past. I believe Peter has learned how to access that memory, and to use it." Walter pointed to the Boo Berries that Peter had set up. 

"Observe the cheery colored cereal. This same molecule may appear with either of its two possible architectures. Likewise, I hypothesize that Peter has developed the ability to appear in either universe by shifting the temporal situation of his own body, effectively jumping between two biophysical resonance structures. Like tuning a radio, except that it's possible his ability can extend out from his body like a broadcast, or Tesla's death ray."

"Tesla's what? _"_ Olivia said.

"Never mind that. Just imagine that if a body is closely enough attuned to Peter's frequency, it can be transformed along with him." Walter furrowed his eyebrows at the cereal. "This is how I believe he brought you with him."

Olivia was quiet for a moment, staring at the cereal on the table. She poked the marshmallows around. 

"We must try to get control of it, Peter," Walter said. "It will be so very important." 

Peter accepted that statement until he thought about it. His father using the future tense put him on guard. "What do you mean by that, Walter?" he asked.

"Well, for one, what if you'd crossed over while that poor woman was in the bed? How would you like having your nipples permanently fused to the inside of her ribcage?"

"Unnecessary imagery," Peter said, shaking his head adamantly. " _So_ unnecessary." But then something else clicked, and he had to immediately put his hand under his shirt to be sure that his back was still smooth and unmarred. The motion was so abrupt that it startled Olivia and Walter both.

"What is it?" Olivia said.

"Not that I'm complaining," Peter said, psychologically satisfied to feel only normal skin under his hand, "but why is my back _not_ fused to some bedsheet from the other side? Or from this one?"

Walter shook his head. "Son," he said, "I don't believe I know. But we'll find out."


	53. January: Walter Finds Out

### Walter Finds Out

After a morning of getting the Sex Talk from Walter (which was longer than the usual Sex Talk because most fathers' Sex Talks don't include mesomerism and inter-universal transit), Peter and Olivia escaped to a coffeehouse on the park that made hearts on their lattes and had a nice view of the ducks. They stayed there for two hours, ruthlessly exploiting the Endless Belgian Waffles, and when they got back to the lab, they settled down into their case files with renewed focus.

"This makes, what, eighteen events, now, since New Year's?" Peter asked. "Whatever They're doing, They're picking up speed."

"But I don't get it," Olivia said. "Eighteen events, and not a single shapeshifter incident? It doesn't add up: if They're trying to invade, then where's the army?"

"Unless it's not an invasion," Peter said. He leaned over and pushed a map over the documents she was studying. "Look. These new events all overlap the extended radii of previous Fringe events. You ever seen a sinkhole open up?"

Olivia frowned. "You're suggesting this is some kind of chain reaction?"

"Weak spaces collapsing in on each other, sure."

"But why? What's doing the pulling?"

"Gravity," Peter said, "as usual, right?" He took back his map. "If we've got infinite universes, then maybe we can assume they all exert an equal pull on each other -- a pull that is exactly strong enough to keep each universe parallel, yet separate. But put some holes between worlds, and maybe there aren't enough pylons to support the bridge, so to speak."

"If you're right, then how do we prop up the bridge?"

"We don't," Walter said, from directly behind their tilted-together heads. They sighed in unison and shifted apart.

"We don't?" Peter said. "As in, we can't?"

"The universe is seeking equilibrium, and we would be unwise to stand in its way," Walter said. "Come here, Peter."

For the first time, Peter noticed the crop circle in the corner of the lab where Walter must have spent his morning jamming all the furniture into the periphery. It looked like a blast radius. And yet, irrationally, Peter went where Walter pointed, to stand at its center.

"What is this?" he asked, glancing around. 

"A proof," Walter said. He drew something out of his pocket (which Peter recognized as their universal remote, slightly altered) and as Peter followed Walter's gaze around the edge of the circle he realized that the piled-up furniture was just camouflage for the beacons. Beacons of the same variety that had vaporized everyone but Peter on a bridge.

"Walter, whatever you're thinking of doing, _don't,"_ Peter said, but Walter punched a button and the beacons spun the air wiggly, reducing the desks and chairs to blurs and completely obscuring anything further away. Peter heard Olivia speak Walter's name in a tone that usually preceded gunfire. And then, more troubling, he heard gunfire. It was just one shot, but it was enough to make Peter dive out of the circle and do his best duck-and-cover under one of the displaced desks. From outside the radius of distortion, he was able to see Walter splayed on his back with Olivia's knee on his chest, her firearm trained on his face. Under her edict, it seemed, Walter pressed buttons on the remote until the beacons went dead.

"Okay," Peter said, daring to crawl out from his hole. "What the _hell_?"

Olivia glanced back at him momentarily. "Put pressure on it," she ordered. Peter looked dumbly at her.

"What?" he asked.

"Put pressure on it," she repeated. "I'll call for an ambulance." With her free hand, she fumbled her phone from her pocket.

"Hold on," Peter said. "What-"

"As I've already _told_ you, Agent Dunham, Peter is in no need of medical attention," Walter said, though Olivia wasn't listening. She was half dialing 9-1-1 and half side-eying Peter.

"Wait, why would I be in need of medical attention?" Peter said, insistently. Olivia lowered her gun and phone, fractionally.

"You're not shot?" she said.

" _SHOT?" Peter_ looked from Walter to Olivia, who made side-eyes at Walter. "You did _not_. _"_ Walter seemed only slightly chagrined. _"Really?!"_

"Are you sure you're all right?" Olivia asked. Peter patted himself down, to double-check.

"I'm fine," he said. "Walter-- what were you _thinking?_ "

"You were never in any real danger," Walter insisted.

"Are you fucking serious?"

"There are hypotheses and there are _hypotheses_ ," Walter said, "and this was the latter."

At that moment, Astrid backed in through the lab doors, partially hidden behind several full paper bags. "Walter," she said, "you would not believe how many suppliers I had to go through to get this many durian-" She turned around to see the mess (and Olivia reluctantly removing her knee from Walter's chest), and finished quite differently than she started. "Walter, what did you _do?"_

 

 

Astrid's rapid-fire debriefing ("He shot me." "I did _not."_ "Well he _tried_.") was over before she'd even dropped the bags. Immediately afterward, Walter started protesting.

"This was all quite relevant," he said, "and I would have hoped that Peter would have been more enthusiastic about my findings, considering they may allow him to resume worry-free sexual intercourse with Agent Dunham."

Astrid's head tilted slightly to the left. "Hold on," she said. "W _hat_?"

"We're all adults here," Peter said, "so if we could just forget-"

"Not a chance," Astrid said.

"The _issue_ ," Walter said, "was how Peter was able to travel between universes without becoming enmeshed with surrounding matter. I realized that the answer must lie in the most basic organization of our two worlds."

"I'm sorry," Astrid interrupted, "but, traveling between universes? It was _that_ good? _"_ She looked to Olivia but couldn't get any eye contact. Peter smiled pridefully at the floor.

"Imagine, if you will," Walter continued impatiently, "that each universe has a proprietary system of organization -- a unique subatomic scaffolding, not shared by any other universe -- like the crystalline structures of snowflakes."

"Precious," Peter said. 

"Each object, living or dead, within a universe would share the same physical architecture. Thus, an object in transit _between_ universes would need to undergo a physical reorganization in order to survive the trip." 

"I assume that's where the failure rate skyrockets."

"Presumably. However, the process of restructuring would _also_ create a period of instability during which the object would exist as a particulate soup, no longer solid and highly vulnerable to contamination by foreign matter. Of course, once our contaminated traveler arrives at his destination, his body will re-solidify in the new architecturewith catastrophic results." 

"So, survive the bomb, and the fallout'll get you."

"Figuratively speaking. The extremely small operating parameters of living cells require that _most_ individuals experience atomic recalibration quite rapidly," he said. "They are essentially flash-frozen around contaminants by their own race toward equilibrium. But not you, Peter." 

"And I can escape that, how?" Peter said.

"I believe you have developed an ability to _relax_ the process of attenuation.

Perhaps stemming from early exposure to both Cortexiphan and the frequencies of both universes, it's possible that your cells developed multiple states of equilibrium to which they are able to return, as needed. This would slow their need to shift toward a single cellular frequency, which would allow contaminants time to filter out of your atomic matrix-" here he fluttered his hands toward Peter with such vigor that Peter took a step back "-before permanent embedding occurs."

Peter left the table suddenly and returned to Walter's beacon circle. "So, that bullet," he called back. "It didn't miss me, exactly." He knelt beside a tiny spray of black sand. "It went right through."

"The harmonic beacons encouraged your cells to resonate between between frequencies," Walter said, "rendering you selectively permeable to objects from either universe."

"Harmonic beacons; yeah, I noticed those a little too late."

"Don't sound so put-upon. It was perfectly safe."

"Except that they _kill_ people."

"Not you."

Peter reached out and drew a line through the powder. "True," he admitted.

"And I postulate that given the extent of your recent...activities," Walter said, "this ability may extend further than mere bedsheets."

"How much further?"

"As far as you will it to. Completely hypothetically, of course. Though I do hope we can reproduce the effects in the absence of intercour-"

_"Walter."_


	54. January: The New Room

### The New Room

Peter would never dispute that it was difficult to mask the taste of raw beef liver (and bless Astrid's heart for trying) but the electrolyte smoothie tasted like pennies off the floor of a dirty bus. He sucked furiously on the lemon she gave him afterward and didn't gag (but just barely).

"I'm still tweaking it," she apologized, slinking away with the empty bottle as Peter slapped the wall and coughed up a seed.

"I'm not convinced I need this many electrolytes," he choked. Which was true, but he'd tossed back the entire pint anyway, mostly because he wasn't sure he wouldn'tneed them. Now that the New Room was finished (which translated to, 'now that they could stick Olivia in an Olivia-proof box and crank up the Walternator as high as it would go') the list of could's and might's was lengthy. No telling how many cations a human brain could burn through trying to get another human brain _not_ to destroy everything within reach.

The New Room was smallish, and had two parts: the antechamber (which was Walter's playground) and the interior (which was Olivia's, in theory). The antechamber was cramped but could fit three, comfortably, in rolling chairs. The panels of buttons and monitors gave it a recording studio vibe, except that recording studios lacked double-bolted doors salvaged from Mass. Mental, not to mention a plexiglass and kevlar-fiber window. 

The window gave a nice, full view of the interior, though there wasn't much to see when Olivia wasn’t in there. The wiring was entirely hidden: the electrics ran beneath the floor and came up through the base of the Walternator, and fiber optics connected sensors on the Chair with their monitors in the antechamber. 

Despite all the precautionary built-ins, Walter remained insecure. When Peter pushed in through the antechamber door with a lemon wedge between his teeth, Walter was trying to jimmy his chair as low as it could go so he could cower being the control panels, wearing chain mail he'd stolen from Antiquities Storage.

"Be a man, Walter," Peter said. He leaned over the switch banks and rapped the plexiglass. "Just like the zoo, remember? She can't get you."

_"Probably,"_ Olivia said, coming in behind Peter and continuing straight through the second door. "I _probably_ can't get you, Walter." The Mass. Mental door whuffed shut behind her and Walter tried to force his chair even lower.

 

 

They put Olivia to sleep with a big damn needle and bag of Astrid's 'Nachtmusik,' which Peter hoped was as pleasant as it sounded. She looked harmless, stretched out in the chair, and if Peter couldn't see her brain tap-dancing across the monitors he might've been fooled into thinking so.

When Walter spooled up the Walternator, it reverberated like elephant footsteps right through the walls. Peter tried not to watch Walter work the switches, but he still felt it empathetically every time the machine took a crack at Olivia. And even though he knew Olivia'd agreed to this, even _asked_ for it, Peter had to struggle not to pass the love on to Walter when the machine split roots through their heads (World's Most Unconscious Bodyguard, reformed). On the heavier shocks, though, he let a little bit get through, just to make sure Walter remembered that he was running electricity through an actual human being. 

"Peter!" Walter hissed.

"Learning curve," Peter shrugged.

By the time the volley of shocks was over, the handle of the double-walled interior door had become a potential-difference joy buzzer that shocked Peter every time he got close. He laid his hand on it and let the flow of jilted electrons raise the hairs up and down his arm.

Walter hovered his finger over the door release as he slouched even lower behind the equipment. "Be careful," he said.

"Do it," Peter said, and the sound of the deadbolt undoing itself made him jump.

 

 

"'Livia," Peter said, stepping gently into the room with her. He felt out for her mind, but couldn't get a handle on her. Their connection was still spotty at best, despite their secret practice, and now, impeded by sedatives, it was barely functional. She was awake in the Chair, though, blinking at him, so the Nachtmusik had worn off on schedule. Good.

"Ready when you are," he said. They weren't going to do much, today. Just probe the situation a little. It wouldn't the first time she'd been asked to exercise her abilities under the influence, but it would be the first time she'd been under _this much_ influence. 

"Take your time." He fished a little metal monster truck out of his pocket and set it on the plastic instrument tray clamped to the Chair. Between groggy blinks, Olivia's eyes directed his attention deliberately toward her arm. The needle.

"Happy to," Peter said. Moving slowly to her right side, he brushed his hand along her arm, tracing to the crossbones of surgical tape that held the needle in place. Peeling it away, he got his fingers around the hilt of the needle. Before he could slide it out, he was distracted by frantic movement in the observation window and the clicking of the intercom.

"Pet-" was as far as Walter got before the Walternator made a sound like a snapping belt and shot out a residual discharge that caught Peter through the fingertips: not some wool-socks-on-the-carpet shock, because they weren't playing around with the charge, anymore, but one that stiffened him in place until Walter hit the emergency kill a second later. It hurt like a bitch, and from the way Olivia tensed up, Peter was pretty sure the current had gone right through the needle and gotten her, too.

And, yeah, she responded to that pretty much the way he should've expected.

 

 

Peter backed out of the door so fast that he still had his head turned to the side when Walter saw him, tilted the way Olivia'd tilted it by force. For a minute, he stood with his back pressed against the door like she'd follow him out, despite being bound inside. Walter watched a drop of blood fall from his lip to the floor.

"Well," Peter said, smiling crookedly, "that could've gone better."


	55. January: A Decent Invitation

### A Decent Invitation

Peter dropped his keys on the catch-all table by the door. Olivia paused behind him, kicking off her shoes.

"Maharaja for dinner?" he suggested. "Bet they've got a goat curry with your name on it."

"Uh," she said, untangling slushy laces, "not tonight."

He nodded to the tune of her boots thunking into the corner. "Okay," he said. "Can I get you anything else? Coffee? Tea? Walter's special-mix hot chocolate?"

"Peter." She tugged her hat off, leaving strands of loose hair in the way of her face, and made the effort to smile. "I'm just...not in the mood, I think."

"Don't worry about it," he said. He understood. After breaking in the New Room the way they had, a little time and space would probably do them both some good. His hand grazed over her shoulder, then fell to the side, inviting her into the house. "After you."

She slipped by him to the kitchen, and he let her have that room to herself. It left him to occupy the living room, which was fine, because the piano was there, waiting for him. Across from the fireplace, it fit neatly into an inlet where a bookshelf might have been. Peter pulled the bench under himself just far enough to stay perched on the edge. Smooth under his fingers, the keys asked peacefully for direction. He smelled toast from the kitchen, and started off with Saint-Saens.

Playing, for Peter, could be an act of restructuring, of ordering things in his head. When he needed, it could also be the reverse: a descent into chaos that let him express frustration over a problem he couldn't solve.

Their inaugural New Room run hadn’t been so bad. A little bloody nose; nothing he couldn’t handle. The New Room wasn’t the problem. The problem was the Other Thing: their side project, which was going just as well as the New Room had gone. Which was embarrassing, because after weeks of trying to get her to let him play Professor Xavier with her, he was finding that he sucked at it.

And he didn't _know_ why it wasn't working. They were trying so hard, putting in their odd hours almost every day, and every time they sat down together Peter felt like _t_ _his_ would be the breakthrough session: _this time_ he’d find that magical path into her head. But it never turned up. Despite their perseverance, there'd been nothing but disappointment. 

Olivia would keep trying as long as he asked her to, good soldier to the end, but Peter wasn't sure what else he could try.

 

 

After killing the last of the bread and jam in the kitchen, Olivia read cookbooks. Well, not read _,_ exactly. She flipped through the pages and stopped for especially good pictures, but mostly she anchored her eyes to nothing in particular and listened to the piano.

She could always tell when Peter was playing for himself. Often, he played for her or Walter from his repertoire: pieces with beginnings and ends and middles that showed off what he could do with eighty-eight keys. But when he sat down for his own edification, he didn't worry about beginnings or ends, or keeping his chords precise, or making sure to stretch the trills out in the way that Walter liked him to do for the purpose of humming along. Instead, he played melodies he'd memorized ages ago. Started with just notes in a row: simple, then exploding as he expanded them like fractals, layering melodies until the original was buried, barely there. It was like listening to him think.

After flipping entirely through ‘Winchester's Pies to Die For,' Olivia migrated to the study, where the music came in from all sides. She tucked herself into the couch with her feet flat on the floor so she could feel the vibrations of the notes and the _clock_ of pedals against the frame as he released them. It was orderly, even when it wasn't: even when she just had to trust that there was a rhythm that she just couldn't hear.

She closed her eyes and let her hands drift beside her thighs on the couch cushions. To a kid who'd never had lessons, the sounds Peter produced on the piano were akin to an act of magic. It seemed impossible, even up close, that he could know the next thousand positions of his fingers by heart. She believed Peter when he told her it seemed like magic to him, sometimes, too.

Imagine being able to do that.

She uncurled her fingers, let them spread. Her fingers tapped lightly at the upholstery, eyes moving despite being closed. The song he'd chosen was visceral to her. She wanted to be closer to it. To him. Hands on hands, moving.

Imagine.

 

 

Peter heard Olivia move into the study when she did: a welcome movement, not entirely unexpected. She liked the piano. Liked it plenty. Just how much she liked it had been proven quite a few times since it'd been delivered. He smiled, keeping it to one side of his face: a single crow's foot on the cheek she wouldn't be able to see from the room next door. If she wanted to watch, he'd let her think she was doing it covertly.

A few lines from the end of some impossible Liszt, Peter felt something he couldn't, at first, identify. Until a few bars later, when he realized it was _her_ , appearing quietly at the back of his mind like a new tree in an old forest. His fingers tripped over a chord. With everything he'd tried, he'd never stopped to think that Olivia might find her own way to make things work.

She got a good hold on him halfway through the same Rachmaninov he'd played for her that first night. He felt her catch -- which made his proprioception glitch for a second -- and then she was right there with him. He didn't waste time asking how, just kept playing, knowing she was playing, now, too.

They went on like that for an hour.

 

 

When Peter got up from the bench, he left the damper pedal locked, the notes still resonating around him when he got to her. Olivia didn't bother to pick up a book from the coffee table when he walked in, just let her head relax on the high cushions, waiting. Smug, even. Peter got close, put a knee up on the couch and let Olivia’s mouth be his balancing point as he tipped forward. Mechanical advantage was not on Olivia's side: she could only pull back to speak by pressing her head into the cushions, and it was all too easy for Peter to make up the lost inches immediately. Ears-deep in the quilt slung over the back of the couch, she tilted back and drank his satisfied hums through the bones of her face. When Peter pulled back, he was full-on smiling.

"'Livia, you-" he said. "Just... _you_." He shook his head. "I have to say I'm a little ashamed of myself." All this time, he'd been so one-sided. Olivia kissed him again, but he pulled away. "I kept thinking I just had to try harder, to break in, somehow." He tucked her hair behind her ear. "But that was never gonna happen, was it? Not like that."

Olivia opened her mouth to protest, but Peter cut her off.

"I'm not saying you haven't tried,” he said. “I'm not saying it's even something you're conscious of. Everything I've asked you to do, you've done, without complaint. You've been admirable. But let's just agree that you don't take well to being forced into anything."

She smiled.

"You," he said, "just needed a decent invitation."

Olivia didn't say a word, but kissed him instead until Peter returned the favor. With his lips on hers, he didn't try to go into her head and he didn't try not to, but one minute he was cognizant of having her wrists in his hands, holding them against his neck while her palms drove the temperature of his face up beyond survivable, and then the next he was out of his mind: instruments backwards, needles reading upside-down, _feeling_ the way her face looked.

Thinking with her was like swimming with clothes on; everything was difficult, weighted, slow to respond. It wasn't like Vermont: not the dominion of his mind over hers. He wasn't in the driver's seat. There wasn't a driver's seat at all. And it wasn't perfect -- not nearly as neatly functional as it could be (or would be) -- but what it _was_ was something shared _._ It was her choice to meet him halfway; it was the only way this would ever feel right to her.

Peter felt himself standing, and realized he was being given a sort of command. He laughed, and so did she.

"I think this is something we should celebrate," she said.

"Is that so?" he asked, as she walked him backwards.

"Upstairs. And when you tell Walter, you leave this next part _out._ "


	56. January: Grave Digger

### Grave Digger

The snow started just after noon, and by the time Olivia drove them home, the car was fishtailing around corners. Whiteout conditions hit as they turned into the driveway, and that seemed to stoke some bizarre enthusiasm in her: as soon as they got in the front door, she started digging through the random-winter-shit basket for gloves.

"If you think I'm going out there with you," Peter said, pushing her upended butt aside to get past, "you are tragically mistaken."

"But it's a _blizzard_ ," she said, like that was a good thing.

"And I will come for your corpse in the morning, but don't expect me before breakfast."

Olivia snorted. She gave up on tilling the pile for matches and pulled up one red mitten and one green glove.

"Besides," Peter went on, "you should probably conserve your energy, because you're helping me shovel tomorrow. Enjoy not being able to lift your coffee for a week: the sidewalk is longer than it looks."

Olivia yanked a hat on, facing her smile toward the ground. "You coming?" she asked, pushing the basket toward him. Peter's stomach growled.

"Can we at least eat first?" he asked. Walter had beaten them home from work, and Peter smelled bacon.

"We'll miss it if we wait," Olivia said. "Put a hat on."

"What _is_ it with you and imminent peril?"

"I did run off and join the FBI," she said, unpinning a scarf from its hook.

"Right," Peter said. He pried his boots off defiantly. "Well, your date with gangrene can wait, because there's going to be breakfast for dinner in, like, five minutes."

"Then I'll see you when I get back," Olivia said. The front door coughed wind and ice as she slipped out. Peter waited a second, shook his head, and put his boots back on.

 

 

Powder puffed behind Olivia as she leaped toward the street. The wind folded around her body and carried ice crystals directly into Peter's corneas, so he squinted and followed her with his head down, walking in her footsteps to keep the snow out of his boots.

"Wait up," he called.

"Keep up," she called back. Peter sighed, packed a snowball as best he could and winged it at the back of her head. If he was going to lose his toes while Beauty Queen of the Yetis stomped around in the storm of the century, then he might as well enjoy himself doing it. 

 

 

The floodlights behind the elementary school were tethered to an oversensitive motion sensor. The bulbs burned through the dense storm, illuminating the skeleton of a half-buried park that jutted through drifts like whalebone. Olivia made a path to the swingset and mitten-dusted a seat for herself, wedging the fluff of her coat between the chains. Peter dug out the slide to sit beside her. The wind had calmed down, finally, but the snow was still a million-flea circus around their heads.

"So," Peter asked, exhaling clouds, "should I dig us in for the night?"

Olivia smirked. "Maybe," she said. She slouched over her mismatched mittens, submerged boots twirling the swing from side to side, while Peter rubbed his hands together experimentally. The feeling was coming back to his fingers, and, under his coat, he was almost a furnace. He smiled to himself and tucked his chin comfortably down into its two-scarf nest. Snow fell, and, in the sense that it blotted out every other sight and sound, nothing else happened: snow fell, and that was all, for quite some time.

"I'm surprised," Olivia said, finally.

"Hmm?" Peter said.

"You haven't pulled out the old, 'huddling naked for warmth,' line, yet."

"Well," he hedged, breaking the lattice of ice that had formed on his three-day stubble, "we don't have a sleeping bag. I'm not sure getting naked without one would have the same effect."

Olivia tipped her head back. Peter did, too. The snow turned into bullets, fired from miles above. "We could find out," she said.

"No," Peter said. "No, we could _not_." He untangled his scarves to shake them out, and when Olivia got up from her swing, he didn't pay her any attention until she appeared in front of him, backlit and glowing.

"Walter would be so disappointed in you," she said. "Where's your sense of experimentation?"

Scarves mid-shake, Peter looked up. Even with her face in shadow, he could read that look. "If you're trying to appeal to my sense of adventurous sexuality," he said, "bringing Walter into it isn't the best approach."

Olivia shook her head and advanced until she stood over his knees. Her lips were dahlia pink _._ She licked them.

"Wait; wouldn't this be more fun with quilts?" Peter asked. "Radiant heating? Warm brandy?"

Olivia shook her head again and pushed him back against the slope of the slide. Peter's head sank with the rest of him into eight inches of snow, packing silence around his ears. He could see Olivia's mouth move when she spoke, and it looked like she said, _relax,_ but he wasn't sure.

"Be aware," he said, as her hands grazed their way down his jacket, "that cold tends to have a deleterious effect on..." -he paused- "...on..." He paused again, longer this time. "Oh, fuck it."

The lips that touched his were wet, wind-chilled and clumsy with numbness. Beyond that, though, her mouth burned like a Franklin stove. Peter arched toward the heat because it was warm and she was hot and both were welcome. She kissed him until she'd proven him wrong about 'certain parts,' then pulled back, brushing snow off his lapels.

"You're right," she said, still straddling him on the slide. "This _would_ be more fun with quilts."

Peter narrowed his eyes. "Oh," he said. "I see."

"See what?" Olivia said, backing off and extending a hand to pull him up. He took it.

"You're playing the long con, here," he said, staggering up, brushing at everything. Olivia smiled and helped scoop snow out of his collar. Peter found his scarves where he'd dropped them, shook them out (again) and twisted them back into place. "Well, just you wait," he warned, as he tucked the ends into his coat, "you're gonna get what you're asking for."

"Oh, I hope so," she called back, her voice barely audible through the storm as she blazed the trail for home. Her shape receded into the dark and Peter slap-dusted his back the best he could.

 

 

It was long after they got back -– after hanging their wet clothes in the front hall and reducing Walter's bacon and challah souffle to an empty, butter-black pan -– that they got down to the business end of their private time. Capitalizing on the dying fire in the living room, Olivia dragged the couch close to the fireplace while Peter chaperoned Walter's bedtime rituals. It took longer than usual, and Peter reappeared carrying an ancient VHS recorder on his shoulder.

"Well," he said, "you can guess what Walter wants with this."

"No," Olivia said, immediately.

"But he asked so nicely," Peter said, setting the behemoth down behind the couch. It looked like a broadcast camera from 1987, right down to the pointy, foam-covered microphone. "For science."

"Not happening," she reiterated.

"Yeah, that's what I told him," Peter said.

"Besides, I don't think our mental thing would make the type of home movie he-"

"Wait," Peter said. "Think carefully about what you're going to say."

Olivia sighed. "Right. All right; yes. It would make exactly the kind of home movie he would like."

"Mostly silent. Lots of staring. Nothing happens. What's not to like?" Peter said, falling back into the couch. After a moment, he stripped off his sweater and threw it toward Walter's reading chair. Whether it hit, he didn't see. "Good fire."

Olivia hummed.

"What," Peter said.

"Nothing," she said. Propping an elbow on the arm of the couch, she ran her fingers up past her temple and let them catch in her still-damp hair, resting her head. 

“I’m sorry about the camera,” Peter said. “It’s just Walter being Walter. Can't expect him to know what we're doing and be okay with not being allowed to watch.”

“No,” Olivia said, “it’s fine. It’s not that. I’m just thinking."

Peter turned all of himself toward her. "About anything in particular?"

"No," she said, tipping her head tiredly. The fire snapped once and shifted, embers falling through the grate and glowing against the brick. "Yes."

"I'm listening."

"It's not important."

"Is it more important than Walter's favorite cereals? Because I've listened to about sixty hours on that since I've gotten him back, and he shows no signs of slowing." Olivia looked sheepishly over at him, and he kicked his legs up onto the coffee table. "So."

"I don't know," she said. She frowned, or smiled, or tried for something between the two while she shifted in place. "Remember how you said that when this is all over, I should consider staying here with you?"

"That's been bothering you?" Peter asked, mock-serious. "Because that was like, a month ago, and I'd kinda hoped that, by now, you were past the point of consideration."

"Peter-" she warned, glaring at him.

"A lot’s happened since then.” 

She narrowed her eyes.

“We have sex. Great sex. But, sorry, go on."

"You said there were billions of universes," she said.

"Probably should've aimed higher with that figure, but yeah."

"So, out of all these universes, I can only see two. Why?"

Peter paused.

"What if," Olivia said, "I can only see them because they're mixed up with each other? What if the only reason I have any access to the Other Side is because something is keeping them mixed up?"

"You mean me," Peter said.

"It only makes sense that the thing that will fix the universe will _fix_ the universe. All of it."

Peter moved his legs from the coffee table to the couch so he could stroke her hip with his toes. He stared through the fire.

"I agree," he said. "That makes sense." Olivia's head dropped. "But," he said pointedly, tapping her thigh with the side of his foot, "what _doesn't_ make sense is that any of this would've happened, if we weren't meant- I mean, for all this to lead up to nothing... I wouldn't understand that. I have to think that this is about more than just quantum givesies-backsies."

Olivia nodded, but stayed quiet.

"What?" Peter prodded.

"Promise me," she said, "that, when the end comes, whatever that looks like, you'll do everything you possibly can to stay here, with me."

Peter blinked and swung his legs down from the couch, grounding himself. "Sweetheart," he said, and she cut him off.

"What if all we're doing is rushing toward a place where you don't even exist?" She turned to him. "What if I wake up one day and everything is back in its right place and I don't even know you're gone?"

Peter's hands were around her face before she'd finished her sentence, pulling her into a deep lean over her own knees so he could kiss her fiercely. "If you think," he whispered against her cheek, before dipping back for more of her mouth, "that I'm doing this work for any other reason- if you think I've ever participated, at all, in any of this, for any reason beyond you or Walter-" He drew away from her, holding her face at the barest distance from his own until she opened her eyes. "'Livia. I promise you," he said, "if I have the choice, it will always be you."

"And," she whispered, eyes fluttering shut, "if you don't have the choice?"

"I will. We will." He kissed her again, driving his point home through skin and pressure until she seemed to acquiesce, resting her forehead against his neck. "And if worse comes to worse, you'll have Walter around to break everything all over again," he said.

Olivia smiled a meager smile. "With Walter around," she whispered, "that would be pretty much inevitable."

"See, then? Don't worry about it."

Her breath hitched over his collarbone.

"'Livia," he said. "Don't worry about it."

She swallowed. "Okay.” After another quiet moment, she sat up and brushed her eyes clear. "Get the car," she said, and she didn’t mean the station wagon or the SUV.

"Now? Really?" Peter said. "We already put in four hours at the lab. We don't have to-"

"Peter," she said, "all of this is going to end. That much I know. And if there's a way I might be able to control _how_ , then I have to learn it, because the cost of that will be nothing compared to what might happen if I don't."

Peter held her gaze for a minute. It was clear and resolute. If the universe were the unstoppable force, then Olivia Dunham was the immovable object. "Understood," he said. He ruffled his hair (which had dried in the unfortunate shape of his hat), turned to the end table and rummaged through the drawer, muttering so she could hear. "Mule driver."

Olivia smiled in spite of herself.

"Someday before the end of the world," he bitched, "I'd better get a night off."

 

 

Grave Digger had its home in a drawer in the end table next to the couch. The General Lee stayed at the lab, in the left top drawer of Olivia's desk. There was a Batmobile in the glove compartment of the SUV (in case they had time to kill in the field) and a generic red sports car in the breast pocket of Peter's coat (in case they got stuck with the station wagon). It was Grave Digger that Peter retrieved, now, and placed in his own outstretched palm.

It had taken him a while to master the process he was trying to teach her. After Walter's harmonic beacon assassination attempt, he'd stood at their center, yelling ' _now'_ and ' _again'_ at Astrid until he'd gotten a feel for the modulation of his own cellular radio. After that, he’d practiced in front of a mirror with the Hot Wheels he’d bought for the purpose, flexing his new muscle until it wore out, slowly narrowing his focus until it was only the car that traveled. 

"Ready?" he asked.

Olivia settled once more into her position, shifting her feet on the rug for no real reason, and then focused on the car. Peter felt her join up with him, sitting shotgun in his head while he started (slow at first, so she could absorb how it felt to strike that metaphysical tuning fork correctly). As she observed, he kept Grave Digger oscillating slowly and steadily between worlds.

"Okay," he said. "Whenever you're ready." She nodded and muscled in, sharing the job, round-tripping the car like she was born able. Peter tried not to get too excited: inside their Vulcan Mind Meld, it turned out that she could do almost anything. The problem was that, without him, she lost it every time.

"Ready?" he asked. He receded from their energy pool until he was little more than energetic bedrock for her, and when she nodded again, he backed out entirely.

For a second, he thought he saw the car shimmer, but it stayed solidly in his palm. 

Minutes ticked by.

Then more minutes.

And more.

He waited in silence until his arm got tired of holding his hand up, and even then, he was reluctant to interrupt her concentration.

"Break," he said finally, dropping the car to shake his arm out. If Olivia was frustrated, she didn't let on. Peter kissed her forehead when he got up to stretch his legs. "Too early for a drink?"

She arched back into the cushions, flexing everything. "Never," she said.

"Or..." he said, standing at the fireplace.

"Or what," she prompted.

"Hold on," he said, diverting to the radiator grille by the big bay window. "I just had an idea I should have had weeks ago." With a few expert movements, he jiggled the metal grate loose and reached into the maw behind. Some things never changed. "What's green and brown and red all over?" he asked, pulling out a Ziploc.

"Peterrrr," Olivia said, slouching.

"C'mon," he said, "it's grown with love. Obsessive, insane love, but love nonetheless." He dangled the bag vigorously, and suddenly Olivia could smell it from across the room. "For your face-melting, dissociative pleasure."

"It smells like chocolate," she said pejoratively, but her shoulders perked up.

Peter put his hand back into the hole, hoping for rolling papers. _Bingo_.

 

 

They passed a joint back and forth until they were well and thoroughly baked. Then, warm and fuzzy, Peter picked up the car again.

"Look," he murmured. Grave Digger rolled back and forth on his tilting palm like a marble on a sailing ship, rippling away and reappearing like a mirage. "It's easy."

Olivia paid attention, but she didn't need the demonstration anymore. She already knew the procedure by heart; she just couldn't make it _work_.

"C'mon. Your turn," Peter said. With a shoulder bump of encouragement, he held his hand at eye-level and made the car phase in. "Send it," he said.

Olivia's responding shoulder bump was more of a complaint than anything else.

"You can do it. Try _,_ " Peter said. "Just don't try too hard."

Olivia snorted, but obeyed.

She let the idea of the car float forward; tried to access the feeling of moving between universes. The weed helped, maybe, but it made her drift from her objective to the circumstances surrounding: from cold woods and owls to night skies and Leonids, from planetariums and van de Graafs to Walternators and bad knees, from late nights and blankets to Roast Beast and Scotch, and all points led back to Peter. There was no way around needing him. With even a teaspoon of his energy, she could do anything he asked her to do. She reached out for it instinctively, but found only a wall (a supportive wall, but a wall nonetheless).

"You can do it," Peter whispered. "You can."

He put his free hand up to the back of her neck and started kneading gently. Eyes closed, Olivia let her head fall back against the pressure of his fingers, extending the line of her profile to include the smooth arc of her neck.

"Concentrate," he reminded her, because he was suddenly having a hard time with it, himself.

"Mm-hm," she answered.

"You know how," he pushed, letting his mouth drift unnecessarily close to her cheek. She was practically magnetic. He blamed the weed. The wrinkles deepened again on Olivia's forehead, and Peter was irresistibly drawn to kiss them but was stopped cold by Olivia's hand tightening around his wrist.

"Don't move," she said. And Peter stopped, didn't move an inch, because suddenly he was tingly with the prospect that Olivia might be _feeling it_ , on the verge of _doing it_. He'd stay frozen until it hurt.

"Are you-" he whispered.

" _Shh."_

He shut up and waited: breaths, heartbeats, and brain on hold. The pressure on his wrist increased, pulling him closer by small, slight increments toward her face, and Peter let himself be moved until he was perched so awkwardly on the edge of the couch that his thighs burned to hold the position. The lamp on the end table flickered behind her head, and it may have been his imagination, but everything around Olivia seemed to go dim, just for a second.

"Peter," she gasped, and after another tense beat, she exhaled heavily and shook her head. Her eyes reopened, weary but bright. "Ugh."

"What was that?" he said, picking her face up between his palms.

"I don't know," she sighed. The car was still there. "Something happened. I felt...something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know," she repeated tiredly, but she looked up at him and flashed a tiny, triumphant smile. Her lips were dahlia-pink again, open slightly.

"Well, whatever it was, sweetheart," he said, stealing a kiss, "Walter's going to kill us for not getting it on tape."

"I said I _felt_ something. I didn't actually _do_ anything," she objected, basking in his approval nonetheless.

"Close enough," he said, gazing pridefully at her as she blushed under the attention. He closed his free hand around the wrist that held him still. Olivia blinked a long blink, shrugged slightly, and tried to extricate herself, but Peter pulled her closer. "What was that you were saying earlier about my sense of experimentation?" he murmured. Olivia felt their connection lock firmly back into place, realizing, as always, how much she'd come to miss it when it was gone. This time, though, it came with an infusion of cold and dark.

"What sense of experimentation?" she asked, and the cold got colder.

"You realize the principle on which this entire experiment of ours is based, right?" he asked, breathing hot air onto a patch of her neck until she shivered. "It doesn't work just because I can see into your head." A prickling sensation took up across her back. _Snow_. She felt _snow_. "It works because I can putthings there."

"Peter," she whispered, as an icy zephyr gusted over her spine. Goosebumps were already rising on her skin by the time Peter's tongue made it to her wrist, licking from his grip to the leather of her watchband. When her fingers twitched against his cheek, Peter released her, wrested his arm from her grip and reached for her waist through her shirt. She had the softest damn shirts (mostly because they were all his: after bedtime, Olivia turned into his closet from ten years ago). He fisted up the Harvard Co-op logo until he hit skin. In comparison to the chill he'd built in her nerves, his hands around her hips were forge-hot.

He led her by the mouth to the floor, haphazardly tossing any blankets within his reach to cushion her back, which meant she landed with her head on a nest of Pendleton wool and her shoulders in a blitz of granny-squares, the green in her eyes competing with eighteen shades of someone's remnant yarn. Laughing, of course, because they were on the floor, half-naked, half-successful, burned out and mostly delirious, stripping in front of the fireplace with Walter sleeping (or, more likely, eavesdropping) upstairs.

"Where's a bearskin when you need one?" Peter muttered as his own t-shirt cleared his head and sailed toward the corner to join his sweater.

"You let Walter know what you want it for, and you'll have one by tomorrow night," Olivia said.

Peter buried his mouth in the softer part of her left thigh.

"They'll catch him in the Natural History Museum, stripping the taxidermy," she went on, and Peter made an exasperated sound against the seam of her panties.

"I will bite, if provoked," he warned.

"What, exactly, constitutes provocation?" she tested, and Peter kept his word. "Ow!"

"What are you going to do about it?" he said, sliding scant fabric down her hips, following his fingertips with the ideas of frost and melt.

"There's a video camera behind the couch," she said, gasping between words when Peter's heat and cold overran each other. "Bet I could get a species of mutant bread mold named for me if I- _ah-_ "

Peter dripped invisible ice down the sluice of her belly, and Olivia stopped talking pretty quickly after that.

 

 

Afterward, they wrapped themselves in blankets that were completely unnecessary. Olivia perched contemplatively on the bottom of the stairs while Peter did what he could to destroy evidence.

"So, what do you think happens," she asked him, "when I get it?"

Peter put Grave Digger back in its drawer. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, is there an endgame in Walter's bag of tricks? Is all of this going to come together, eventually?"

Peter paused. He pulled the coffee table back into place and kneed the couch cushions back into order, retrieving her discarded panties from the lampshade. "I'm not sure," he said, looking earnestly up at her while bunching the silk into the collective clutch of their clothes. "I'm kind of hoping we'll know it when it happens."

"Like everything else," she sighed.

"Yeah." Standing still, he surveyed the room, resigned to the inevitable: Walter always figured out what they'd been up to, no matter how perfectly the blankets were folded.

"Well, I guess that's par for the course."

Peter went slowly to join Olivia on the stairs. Together, they listened to the last cracklings of the fire, until Peter cleared his throat. "Hey," he said, low. "What you said, about what happens to me in the end."

She didn't turn to him, but he could feel her listening.

"You're not the only one who's scared about how the pieces are gonna fall." He cleared his throat again. "For a while, it was basically the only thing I thought about. But I had to put my faith in something a long time ago, or I'm not sure I could've made myself stay. Not because I didn't love you, or because I didn't love Walter, but because nobody in their right mind would work toward their own possible nonexistence." He reached out to touch her quilt where it made a mountain over her knee. "If anyone can make things work out the way I want them to, it's you. And me. Us."

He let that hang.

"And if we don't get that final choice," he said, finally, "then I still had this time, with you, that I was never supposed to have. I got one over on quantum physics, and who else in billions of universes can say that?"

Olivia sniffled and rolled her eyes. "That's beautiful, Carl," she said. He shoved the ball of their clothes aside and pulled her by quilt-ends into his arms. 

"Hey," he said, "Sagan had special effects and Vangelis. I'm just doing the best with what I have." Across their link, he felt a bottomless despair that didn't belong entirely to either one of them. "I love you."

"I love you, too," she said. "Don't go."

"I won't," he said. "I won't."

 


End file.
